


My ignorance of the simplest things

by A_French_Ship



Series: My ignorance of the simplest things [1]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), James Bond - All Media Types
Genre: 00Q00 - Freeform, 1930s, AU, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 1930s, British Empire, JAQ - Freeform, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Polyamory, Reunions, travelling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2020-08-10 20:21:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 27,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20141428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_French_Ship/pseuds/A_French_Ship
Summary: London, 1931After some anti-colonialist pamphlets have been published under the intriguing pen-name Q, James Bond, serving as a secret agent for the Crown, is ordered by the government to discover and get rid of this political dissident.On his way to the truth, James meets again with his old friend and former fellow agent, Alec Trevelyan, whose radical democratic views caused his suspension ten years prior.Is James's safe position in the Secret Intelligence Service worth closing his eyes on the disturbing reality of the colonies?





	1. Running in circles

James’s eyes didn’t leave the paper for at least five more minutes before his icy blue pupils turned to Gareth Mallory’s tightly pursed lips. To be given such a task wasn’t something the forty-year-old Londoner was accustomed to, yet it seemed very clear what the other man was looking for.

“And that’s only an extract, Mr Bond,” Mallory added, his fingers holding another handful of paper sheets in a way James would have described as ‘not so relaxed’. “Hopefully we managed to confiscate all of the copies of today’s _Waltham Forest_. But I do not believe this _Q_ will leave us alone for a long time.” He had emphasised the pen-name with such disdain that James fought not to smirk. That was typically what Mallory was like, bossy, uptight and always terribly dramatic.

“And what is it that you want me to do?” James asked, the cigarette the other man had offered to him rolling between his thumb and forefinger.

In return Mallory gave him an imploring look, breaking James’s shell of neutrality for good and ever-so-slightly tugging the corner of his lips.

“You already know, Bond,” he replied, dropping the mister as he felt like James was wasting his time with his questions. If the agent sometimes deemed himself straightforward, Gareth Mallory was being straight to the point at its finest. “This little prig of Q is threatening Britain in a way I’m not entirely willing to admit.” He paused to take a drag of tobacco, puffing the smoke away with his usual cold and calculated grace. “With Germany waking up and those Soviet bastards, let me tell you, Bond, that we don’t need this.”

By we, Mallory meant that Bond and he had common interests, but James wasn’t so sure anymore. Time had went by and what he had first taken for commonly shared values and best interests were now being questioned by years of playing the King’s good dog or whatever that was. In the name of patriotism, James had done things he often thought about during his long sleepless nights – killing, kidnapping, stealing, wounding.

“We stopped three of their publications already, but _this_-“ His finger pointed at the paper in James’s hands, on which was written in bold characters _Britain kills Maasai culture_. “This is going overboard. M has been clear enough: more than ever, the King needs a united and strong Empire.”

James simply nodded, his eyes wandering again on the article. He wasn’t asked his opinion on the matter – did he even have an opinion on British colonies? Everyone seemed to have nowadays, but he didn’t. Yet the prose was convincing, the tone urgent and passionate; and he now understood why Mallory thought those articles were more important than any other anti-colonialist pamphlets that were printed every day.

“You want me to kill them?”

“I want you to get rid of them,” Mallory attempted to correct him even though the aloofness in his eyes were enough information.

“Do you have any more information?” James had learnt soon enough not to delay his agreement too long.

Another puff of smoke was blown out of Mallory’s mouth before the man angrily replied, “No. Not a clue. We searched for any other Q in universities’ papers. Nothing. We don’t even know if this is a group or a person, an initial or a randomly picked letter from the alphabet. The only thing that I can tell you is the man who wrote this had access to secret information and knows what he’s talking about. Chances are that he went to Africa, and stayed there for a long time. His understanding of their culture is deep and I bet he either hired an interpreter or learned local dialects himself.”

James had never been so far abroad, only finding himself in Egypt a couple of times, and his knowledge about Africa stopped at the picturesque childhood tales which were passed on, all about savages, lions and the savanna that James found equally ridiculous and fascinating.

“Our idea, Mr Bond,” Mallory added after finishing his cigarette, the mister appearing again now that he requested James’s full agreement again, “is for you to investigate on British soil, gather as much information as you can on which group might be likely to publish such content, who speaks whatever dialect those people speak and who’s been leaving Britain for Africa those last months. Then, if your inquiries aren’t successful, you’ll go to Kenya, to look for this Q man or this group and to get rid of them. By any means.”

After Bond nodded, Mallory seemed to relax in his seat and he lit another cigarette. “Perfect, Mr Bond. There’s a lecture tonight at the School of Oriental Studies, specifically dealing with the future of the British Empire. You’ll meet the crème of politically-dissident scholars. I want their name, just for the record.”

A knowing smile blossomed on James’s lips, after so many missions for the Secret Intelligent Service, he couldn’t pretend to be surprised by Mallory’s calculation anymore. There was something deeply sinister about obeying this man, but James had learnt over his teenage years that some dreadful things needed to be done in order to preserve his own best interests.

“Alright, 007, I expect this Q case to be ancient history very soon.”

His words were final and James knew better than to discuss them. After all, his reputation within the SIS of being a rather free-willed agent was not to be demonstrated anymore, as he regularly triggered M’s and Mallory’s ire along with a questionable amount of paperwork. With a smirk and a handshake, James left Mallory’s office and found himself in the familiar Great London’s streets.

* * *

The lecture at the School of Oriental Studies proved to be of little to no help at all, old scholars succeeding each other, contradicting each other depending on their political leaning and social background. None of them seemed to demonstrate a vigour or a faith strong enough to actually lead to any sort of action, James realised, quite disappointed. They all feared another Indian rebellion and 007 could barely hear about Africa throughout the whole two hours that the lecture lasted.

When he went out, he purposely leaned against the brick wall of the building, smoking a cigarette as he looked at the dozens of men walking out of the lecture hall. His trained ears listened to every one of them, pretending to be mesmerised by some birds pecking dry bread in Vandon Street. In the small black notebook which he always carried around, Bond had scrupulously written down their names during their intervention on the rostrum, and he now waited for anything.

As his first cigarette died between his fingers, James caught sight of a younger man he had not noticed during the lecture. Black-haired, thin, almost fragile-looking, spectacles. The sun setting didn’t come handy as James was trying to discreetly observe the man. His young age contrasted with those of the other scholars and the peaceful air on his face conveyed the impression that the other attendants’ fights had no repercussion on his mood. He was walking alone, calmly, sure of himself, but when he stepped under the light of a lamppost, James immediately spotted the shadow of a tan on the young man’s face.

Not very believable in this English early spring, James heard himself chuckle sarcastically in his head.

Their eyes met, and when he saw the intrigued and cautious look in the pale pupils of the young man, James knew he had to follow him in one way or another. Tossing the cigarette away, he let his eyes wander along the figure walking past him until he gauged the young man was far enough for him to invoked his double-agent’s skills. That wasn’t such a worry for him, almost a second nature, waiting in dark alleys, his breath short and quiet, invisible.

He followed him past Vandon Street and when he forked down Caxton Street, his walking indifferent to the other man a dozen of yards behind; then all the way down Buckingham Gate, the crowd there both helping James in his tailing and making it extremely more tedious as the young man’s clothes were nothing unusual, just a grey coat thrown on his slim frame and a common brownish hat distracting James’s attention. In fact, the young man was very common in himself, exception made of his tan James deemed quite dodgy. He would have suspected vacations on the Côte d’Azur or Spain, if only the tan wasn’t so intense, nor the young fellow so poorly dressed. James believed he had seen a badly patched-up hole in his coat and the leather of his briefcase was worn out in the corners.

Buckingham Gate then became Greencoat Row and James tried to shorten the distance the crowd had put between them. He had no idea of how he would approach the young man or if such a thing was needed for the moment. _Gathering information_, Mallory had said back in his office. He was gathering information by simply getting accustomed to this individual’s whereabouts.

The double-0 witnessed the exact moment at which the mysterious man realised he was being followed, his step quickening all of a sudden, as his grip tightened on his briefcase. James cursed under his breath as Francis Street stretched itself endlessly ahead of them.

Despite all of his training and his many years as a secret agent, James had to admit that this young man was cleverer than he had first thought, keeping his walking straight and hazardous at the same time, sliding between passers-by like a snake, not creating any disturbance in the constant flow of people. Fast and smooth. 

He lost him in front of Westminster Cathedral, as he ran into a woman whose husband immediately defended, loud and bothersome, earning James the judgemental glares of other evening walkers. He would usually not give a damn, but this punctual deviation in his plans cost him his only lead. 

* * *

James found himself in the middle of Soho, swallowed by a crowd of theatre-goers, without even knowing how his feet had led him there.

In between missions, the 00-agent always preferred the tranquil inactivity of the small flat he rented above a tailor shop in a rather fancy building of Chelsea. Not that he took pride in the appearance of his home, he had simply realised that the old man working on the ground floor was not one of those who asked questions. Even when an exhausted James came back in the middle of the night, the closed buttons of his suit hardly concealing obvious blood stains.

Hence Soho was the polar opposite of the place he wanted to be at the moment, his flat. Public houses weren’t something he particularly enjoyed, nor parlour houses, yet he found himself stepping inside a pub which looked rather agitated.

It was too late in the night to report his half-failed mission to Mallory, he told himself in an attempt of justifying his walking to the counter and his ordering of a pint.

A group of men, already quite drunk, was singing bawdy songs in a corner of the pub, and to avoid any more disturbance, James took his beer to the opposite side, sitting at a table and trying to drown his bitterness in his drink. He had felt so close to an actual lead that being outran by whom seemed to be a scrawny four-eyes had left its print in his self-esteem. He had no clue how to find this mysterious young man again, for now that his number one suspect had perceived his presence and the potential threat it meant, there was no way that he would show up again at any lecture.

In his defence, the youth seemed pretty smart and attentive to his surrounding - which confirmed James’s doubts, but also worried him about the tedious turn the mission had taken. He cursed himself several times, before closing his eyes and enjoying another mouthful of beer. Perhaps it was time for him to retire, no matter what Mallory would say.

Suddenly a laughter he would recognise among thousands pierced through the cacophony of the songs and, on alert, James scanned the crowd, his eyes falling on a table on the other side of the pub, surrounded by men and women standing, laughing loud and blocking James’s view. Yet there was no doubt.

In a swift motion, James stood up and made his way to the origin of the sound, his entrails clenching as he couldn’t believe what he thought was happening. Through his agitated mind, flashes of a silent shroud of snow spreading for as far as the eye can see, the wind freezing him to the bone, his revolver tightly secured in his fist, militiamen running after him. After _them_.

He elbowed his way through the small group of people surrounding the table and suddenly came face to face with a man he knew he too much.

Alec Trevelyan was in a middle of a sentence, his peculiar accent curling around his each syllable with the seductive turn which had made James fall for him more than once. His head was tilted to the side, his words whispered in an ear which belonged to a woman of easy virtue, Bond had no doubt about it. Alec stopped when James faced him, his mouth first slightly opening before it curved into a devilish smirk.

“What sort of dive do you patronise, James?”

The double-0 remained speechless, as if he was facing a ghost. Alec, his blond hair, his burnt cheek and his witted remarks. Alec, his friend and comrade. 006, the fallen angel.

“What the hell are you doing here?” James snarled, almost too aggressively. The women around him distanced themselves ever so slightly when they perceived the heated tone of the intruder with the icy glare. 

“I asked first,” Alec replied, his self-contented smile still playing on his lips as he brought his cigarette to his mouth.

Oh, James knew this expression all too well, yet it never ceased to make his blood boil in his veins. His fists clenched tightly, but he didn’t have the time to reply, for Alec gestured at the women surrounding him and stood up.

“Ladies,” he bid farewell before silently and too calmly leading James to another spot of the pub, this time opting for a place where they could hardly be heard.

“Not the reunion I had in mind,” Alec taunted in a sigh, his drink swirling in his glass.

“Did you even think of a reunion?” James snapped. “For God’s sake, Alec, it’s been ten years!”

In spite of everything, James saw Alec’s temporary failure at keeping his annoying face, a hint of sadness flashing in his eyes. Gone, a second later.

“Don’t be bitter, I didn’t exactly plan my lay-off, James.”

A second of silence left the two men eager for more, eager to revive the old ties between them. Alec looked around, exposing his perfectly sharp jawline as his burn mark caught the light. Then, his green eyes turned back to the other man, his dangerously seductive and wolfish smile back on his lips.

“I know you, James. You wouldn’t wander in Soho without a good reason. So now tell me, what fish are you trying to catch, James?”

His name seemed to be endlessly uttered by Alec in the most vicious way, reminding James how close they once used to be.

“A Soviet spy,” the double-0 lied, the corners of his mouth slightly curling upward as he challenged the other man with his icy blue gaze. “And you?”

Alec chuckled, understanding very much what was happening. “Enjoying a snow-less March, James, nothing more,” he replied slowly, his timber dubious enough to convey as many layers of meaning as James could imagine.

“Nice of you to pay a visit.”

Alec took a sip of his gin, visibly reflecting. His eyes met James’s and his expression softened to a mere harmless smirk. “Bury the hatchet, James,” he pleaded in a tone that was nowhere near convincing. “There were times during which we used our energy in something completely else.”

Bond would have liked to say that today Alec left him cold, but there was something incredibly attractive in those green eyes, a pale light, a sense of brokenness that echoed James’s own. Alec captured the shift in the other man’s armour of anger and the triumphant grin that followed almost drove James to smash his fist right onto the same eyes that made his heart melt.


	2. Shadow play

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: there’s a little bit of money talking in this chapter. Please keep in mind that the value of the pound in the 1930s was way higher (£100 back then roughly equal £6,500 nowadays.) Also, a guinea equals 21 shillings, so approximatly 1 pound and 5 pence.

“Still living so frugally?” Alec asked as he let his green eyes wander on the very few pieces of furniture James had come to purchase throughout the years.

They were sitting in Bond’s living room in his Chelsea flat, lit by a single lamp which projected their image on the wall, deformed and threatening like some Chinese shadow play. James looked at them in melancholy fascination, bringing his glass of scotch to his lips, memories painfully burning his brain.

Their walk back to his flat had been spent in silence, none of the two men knowing exactly what to say, and their discretion on certain matters needed. But as soon as they had crossed James’s threshold, their tongues had come looser and looser and they had regained some of the ease with which they had communicated in the past.

“It has nothing to do with money,” James replied, not even looking up at Alec when he spoke. “I’m not here very often.”

Even if he already knew that, Alec gave James an amused nod. “Are you living at your mistresses’ expense?”

The joke wasn’t so innocent and this time James stopped sipping his drink to take a deep breath. Over the years, Alec had certainly not lost his will to torment his friend, and the simple fact that they had been lovers at a certain point in their life made the joke even crueller to James.

“No, I’m not,” 007 calmly replied, using all the self-control techniques he had learned throughout his training, sure that Alec had been taught the same all together. And the brief answer didn’t seem to please the latter’s wicked sense of humour.

“You still haven’t told me,” Alec re-entered the fray, swirling his scotch in his glass, warming it up, while the heel of his foot gently tapped against the chair leg.

“You tell me,” James insisted - his jacket seemed terribly tight now that the failure of their friendship appeared as clear as the day. “I thought you were dead.”

“No, you didn’t,” Alec claimed with a chuckle. His quiet laughter suspended time between them and once Alec stopped all of his swirling and tapping and chuckling, his expression had got more serious, darker too. “You knew I could survive all by myself, no matter where. I’m an Eastern man after all, James.”

“I thought the agency would get rid of you if you became… an issue.” He hesitated on the last word, knowing it was a term M used quite often and wouldn’t have hesitated to use even if it referred to one of his former agent.

“Maybe I proved myself to be useful in one way or another,” Alec whispered, an aura of mystery floating around his words.

James was not one for such nebulous spiel, so he simply looked straight into Alec’s eyes, hoping he would find any information there. Alec looked deep in thoughts, his scotch almost still in his always so fidgety hand. His smirk seemed to have faltered. James debated insisting, but he pitied the Alec sitting in front of him, he pitied his apparent exhaustion and his dark secrets. No matter how much he longed for explanations, James did not have enough strength to fight against Alec tonight.

“I can see the gears working in your brain,” Alec’s softer voice came and James blinked back to the reality of their current situation – two men sitting in a living-room, two old friends bearing hidden scars and painful memories. And Alec’s tenderness for him had not disappeared apparently. “Weren’t we supposed to have a drink together? Or is it your way to grill me? You seem to have too many things in mind.”

Alec’s green eyes searched into his soul and James suddenly gave up on the idea of hiding everything from him. They had always shared everything, from a small flat in North London when they had just started at the agency, right after the Great War, to food and a bed, sometimes. Then James told him about the lecture at the school, his suspicions, his attempt at tailing the young man he believed had a connection with the whole case, and how it had turned sour. He didn’t give as many details as Alec would have most likely wanted, since in spite of everything, James wished he had kept everything a secret – his training at the Secret Intelligence Service had taught him otherwise.

“You’re not omnipotent then, are you?” Alec laughed as he brought a cigarette to his mouth and took a long drag, letting some smoke curl out of his mouth just to inhale it back through his nostrils.

“I believe I’m not,” James concluded sternly, his pupils loosing themselves in the show of Alec’s strong features hidden behind a curtain of smoke.

“And you need my help, don’t you?” 

It wasn’t so much of a question. A mere observation born from Alec’s undeniable self-esteem. It made James paused for a second. Did he need his help? Was it what he had subconsciously been looking for while bringing Alec home and offering him alcohol? After a few more seconds of internal turmoil, James found himself guilty of teasing Alec’s interest with much recourse of circumlocutions.

“No, I don’t.”

Alec burst into laughter, his whole chest suddenly shaking. “Of course you do. What about M if you fail your mission? She’s going to tear you apart, isn’t she?”

His choice of words made James froze. Everything was so reminiscent of their time together, it almost felt like their old camaraderie had never ceased.

“I can help you,” Alec continued, balancing his glass of scotch in his other hand. James held his breath, waiting for what would undoubtedly follow. “At a cost.” 

There was a sardonic smile on James’s lips when Alec’s eyes turned to his face.

“What sort of troubles are you into this time?”

Alec eluded the question. “I wouldn’t be against some help, myself. Times are hard, James, and there’s only little a man like me can do.”

James smiled more fondly this time, always amused by his friend’s phrasing, his falsely casual hot air. “Is it the mafia? How is it called again…the bratva?” He paused to observe Alec but also to confer some dramatic weight to his words. “Or some money issue? You always had money issues, Alec. I know you by heart. You blew something you shouldn’t have blown. Or is it robbery? Now it’s my turn to play this little guessing game.”

“And you take way more pleasure in it than you probably should.” Alec had a smirk on his face though.

“You’re the one who should be convincing me to accept your help now. Tables are turned.”

“Don’t be so sure about it,” Alec said while finishing his scotch with a jerk of his head, exposing for a fleeting moment the strong muscles of his neck and his Adam’s apple. “The man or the group you’re looking for are anti-colonialist, aren’t they? So, James, I’m going to tell you something you already know. You need my help, more than I need yours, because you know I’m familiar to these circles.” As always, Alec’s rhetoric proved very convincing, and the soft swaying of his voice spread like a wave on a beach and was hard to ignore. “Isn’t it why M fired me in the first place?”

James shrugged, knowing his friend was right.

“I already have contacts in London. Communists, socialists, labourists, chartists. More than you will ever have,” Alec kept on talking, leaning back in his seat, his empty glass on his lap. “Perhaps I know the man you’re looking for. Perhaps we saw each other once or twice.”

“Spill it, if you know something,” James groaned, losing his patience. If Alec was good at small-talking and teasing his adversaries, James had a tendency to go straight to the point. If it weren't for Alec, he would probably have already been looking for another lead, instead of drinking and solving conundrums.

“I don’t,” Alec replied, feigning innocence. “Yet.”

James sighed and refilled his friend’s glass with an inch of scotch. “Is it a yes then?” He had nothing else to lose. The tanned young man – his only lead - had disappeared in the crowd.

“At one condition.”

“How much do you want?” There was no need to beat around the bush with Alec.

“A hundred.”

“Pounds.” James’s tone was half sure and half hesitant, but he wanted to be sure. 

“Guineas,” Alec replied so casually that James had to make a superhuman effort not to punch him in the face.

There wasn’t such a difference between the two, James was aware of it. Be it a hundred pounds or a hundred guineas, Alec had to be messing with him. The worst in all this blackmailing was that Alec knew James had a bank account somewhere with all the money his frugality had prevented him from spending over the years. On this account, James had a little more than three hundred pounds – a fortune – and he wasn’t willing to lose them over a mission. He could have asked the SIS for some money, hiding the fact he was paying a former agent for information behind a night of gambling with the crème of the anti-colonialists at the casino. But he couldn’t possibly use this excuse right at the beginning of a mission without raising suspicions.

“No way,” James responded in a matter of second.

Alec laughed to that, confident in the fact that his friend would end up agreeing. James examined the face of the Russian man, looking for any sign of surrender. He wanted to know what exact circumstances had brought Alec to ask for money, apart from the obvious joy of stripping a friend of their savings.

James started to elaborate strategies – he could give Alec the money and pretend a few weeks later, while on his way to Kenya that he needed a hundred guineas. The Secret Intelligence Services had thousands to spend anyway. It wasn’t so much about the amount, but more about the act in itself. James would have to find a believable lie, something so credible nobody would suspect anything. James was a good agent after all, effective and experienced.

“You’ll have the money once everything is done,” he concluded.

“Hm hm,” Alec replied, shaking his head. “I don’t believe your poppycock. I want the money before telling you a thing.”

“And I want the guarantee that you will honour your commitments.”

Alec snorted loudly. “You know I always honour my commitments,” he said, his timber thick with innuendoes.

James rolled his eyes and flicked his lighter on to light Alec's new cigarette which rested between his lips. “Twenty percent before and the rest once we’re done.”

“We’re a ‘we’ now?”

“Depends on whether or not you agree with my terms,” James answered while putting the lighter back in the pocket of his tweed jacket.

Alec scrutinised his features for what seemed to be ages, before nodding. “Alright, James, you softened faster than I anticipated.”

Their hands wrapped around one another as they clinched their deal. Alec’s palm felt as calloused as it had ever been, James noticed. His mind lost itself in the sensation which brought the memories of many a night when Alec’s hand had used to slide along his spine, their limbs intertwining endlessly.

* * *

James woke up the next morning with a tolerable headache and a foreboding of something that would eventually prejudice the case against the agency. An unusual smell of cigarette floated in the flat, making the man frown with incomprehension. It took the double-0 agent less than a minute to remind the ins and outs of his conversation with Alec, the night before.

“Shite,” James whispered while getting out of his bed.

In the adjacent room, a tall Russian man was lying on the sofa, his legs, too long to fit the piece of furniture, hanging loose like those of a ragdoll. Asleep. James should have known better – Alec’s presence somewhere was a bad omen, without a doubt. Yet there had always been something in Alec that James couldn’t resist to.

After a quick detour in the bathroom to wash and shave his dirty blond stubble, James got dressed and went out of his flat, locking Alec inside. There was no doubt the other man had a gun with which he could blow the lock up or some thief’s skills to pick it, but James wanted to be sure Alec would understand the message.

Chelsea was calm so early in the morning, providing some peace of mind although he was certainly about to commit one of the most idiotic mistakes of his career. He took a bus to the City, feeling almost lightheaded to act so casually, mingling with the crowd of busy Londoners. The atmosphere changed when he reached Threadneedle Street, London buzzing like a beehive next to the Bank of London. He gave a few pence to a young boy selling newspapers, taking great care of his cover, and got inside the building, queuing while reading the news. To a young clerk, he stated the false identity under which he had opened an account a decade ago and, after some paperwork, James walked out of the bank with two hundred pounds in an envelope, the notes tightly secured in the inside pocket of his raincoat. Pounds, not guineas.

Once back in Chelsea, pubs had started to open and the streets had grown more and more agitated. Alec, on the other hand, was still sound asleep in the sofa, James noticed as he dropped the envelope on the table, along with the newspaper.

“Unbelievable,” he whispered when he heard the other man snoring.

With the tip of his foot, the SIS agent tapped Alec’s ribs, choosing to wake him up in the manner that required the less contact. He could have yelled too, broken something on the floor, but there was nothing more disagreeable than having your flank touched by a toenail so early in the morning. And James was determined to make things utterly disagreeable for his friend who had caused him to empty a fairly large part of his bank account the same day.

Alec groaned loudly and rolled on his other side, cursing something in Russian that James couldn’t decipher. His weak mastering of the language had faltered over the years.

“Wake up, scammer, you’ve got a speccy four-eyes to find.”

Alec turned around, his eyes immediately catching sight of the envelope on the table. A low chuckle came out of his throat, a tell-tale sign of an awful day starting for James. The latter could almost feel Alec’s lips stretched in a shark-like smile. His satisfaction bled through every single pore of his skin.

“No breakfast in bed?” he inquired, rubbing his eyes as he sat up on the sofa.

As James reluctantly went to the kitchen to fill the kettle with water, Alec opened the envelope and started to count the notes under his breath, gasping in mocked shock when he noticed it lacked ten pounds. James smiled quietly at the string of Russian curses which followed behind his back. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Kudos and comments are always welcome and they keep me writing!  
Take care!


	3. The winged arrow

James leaned against the glass wall of the phone box, sighing as he careful listened to Tanner exposing the latest news of the Q case. A week later and another article dropped in another newspaper, intercepted in time by Mallory’s lackeys again, yet no other lead. James had cooked the editors, the SIS had placed them under surveillance – nothing but the affirmation that the pamphlet had been a last minute addition, directly sent to the printers. Not that James believed them. Not entirely.

Besides Alec proved himself to be incredibly useless in the case, spending his days wandering in London, with “contacts” according to him, but James couldn’t believe it. Having Alec back in his flat wasn’t the most relaxing thing in the world and James had to mutter a yawn as the man on the other end of the phone finished his report.

“So we have a list, 007, of all the receptionists, the clerks and other paperboys who might have seen or heard from this Q when the articles were delivered. Apart from this, 007, I’m afraid we’re going around in circles,” Tanner explained in the phone, stating the obvious.

This case was driving James crazy. He was an agent for Christ’s sake, not a bloody detective! His role was to get the job done, by which he meant killing who had to be killed. Running after speccy spectres was not what he had signed for, and would never be!

“Alright,” he replied after some seconds, rubbing his eyes as the tip of his shoe tapped against the wall with impatience. He took his notebook out of his pocket and scribbled the names Tanner dictated him, both of them knowing he would have little to no success with those people.

Once it was done, James hung up and walked out of the phone box, making his way back to his Chelsea flat as the sun had set a long time ago. When he opened the door, he caught sight of the Russian man lying on the sofa, his shoes off for once.

“There you are,” Alec exclaimed, standing up, a glass of gin in his hand. James seriously started to worry about the state of his cellar. “M kept you busy all day once again. I see you so little.”

“I don’t necessarily want to see you, Alec,” James replied, a sardonic smile on his face as he poured himself a glass of gin. He would fancy a martini but the current look of his income after Alec had elected to reside on his sofa prevented him from doing so.

“Liar,” the other man snorted before sitting on the armrest, a habit he knew James hated. “What’s new? You know I’m having a hard time finding anything for you. The description of that boy you gave me isn’t really what one would call helpful, if you want my opinion.”

“I don’t want your opinion, Alec, I want result. I gave you what you wanted so now it’s your turn to return the favour, if you please.” James paused to sigh, his exhaustion and utter frustration suddenly kicking in. “I wouldn’t be surprised if all of my money were already gone, by the way.” Alec let out something which sounded like a guilty giggle and James raised an eyebrow in disbelief. “Tanner gave me names – secretaries, paperboys. Nothing really interesting. The man, this Q, seems far more intelligent than anything Mallory had told me.”

“_Names_,” Alec repeated carefully, visibly amused. It signed the end of James’s patience for good. He shot his friend a murderous look, so, out of pity, Alec finally dropped his sly attitude. “I’ve got something for you,” he said. “A… contact told me _Waltham Forest _print their newspapers in the East End. I’ve got the address of the print shop. There might be something interesting there, given the fact that the printer is the one who received the pamphlet.”

It took James a couple of minutes before he actually considered what Alec had just said. “So you proved yourself useful. Bloody finally.”

Alec burst into laughter and held out his now empty glass of gin for James to fill again. “Cheers, James.”

* * *

Unfortunately for James, printing shops worked all night long to deliver the morning news before six every day. So there he was, facing _Barrow and Son_, leaning against a lamppost, bathed in its light, a cigarette between his fingers. Time had never passed this slowly.

He had seen two paperboys leave with a trolley full of newspapers. They were eleven or twelve and James had not seen the point in stopping them, knowing they would run away, afraid and useless. Children talked too much and to anybody. You couldn’t scare a child into silence like you could with an adult. Or perhaps James had what Alec had called “a soft spot” for vulnerable beings – he felt the need to protect them at all cost.

Now James knew the shop was empty apart from Barrow, the printer, a man in his sixties who James had seen through the windows several times during the night. Tossing his cigarette on the kerb, he walked to the door on the side of the building. His steps had the slow and calculated quality of a man used to such situation. He could hear the old man whistling on the other side of the door.

So James slowly let the lock turn until a distinct click promised the door was now closed.

“Georg-“ the man began turning around, before being kicked down to the floor by the agent. That was an unnecessary move, given how defenceless the old man seemed, but James couldn’t bear the increasing frustration he felt since the moment he had dived into this case.

The old man whined as James caught both of his wrists in one of his hands, slamming them against the nearest wall, as his other hand pressed against the man’s mouth, deadening any call for help.

“I have no time to loose, Mr Barrow,” James began, his voice unhurried, each syllables sliding out of his lips with easiness. “I’m looking for a special someone. Two weeks ago, you printed a pamphlet against the Crown for the _Waltham Forest Guardian_. Tell me who gave you the paper.”

All that James heard in return was a moan followed by a cough, and the agent rolled his eyes, congratulating himself for having the presence of mind to put a pair of leather gloves before leaving his flat.

“Mr Barrow, I don’t have the time, nor the wish to wait any longer.” His grip strengthen around his wrists, leading the man to let out yet another whine. “Let me explain it again, then. Two weeks ago you allowed a pamphlet to be published. A pamphlet signed by a certain Q. I am looking for this man, Mr Barrow, so please make an effort.”

James sighed when the old man did nothing but groan against his leather glove, fidgeting in his grip. “Please comply, sir, for you should know I won’t be hold responsible if you’re detained somewhere at her majesty’s pleasure.”

The man stilled at the threat, getting all limp under his grip, so James released him, although his hand remained against his mouth, until he felt like the man was ready to talk.

“I don’t know him,” Barrow said, defensive, which amused James more than anything. “He came here once, saying he worked for the _Guardian_, so I didn’t suspect anything!”

“I believe you, Mr Barrow,” James began, his voice softening to the point it turned sticky and dubious. “But you understand that I need more, right?” The old man nodded hurriedly, his face so pale James could see small veins in his cheeks. “So tell me, Mr Barrow, what did this man look like?”

“I don’t remember a thing! He was normal!”

James rose an eyebrow at the description, feigning an utter disappointment while making a show of feeling the pocket of his coat. He wore a gun of course, but Barrow’s imagination seemed enough for the moment.

“Young, he was young.”

“Now, now, that’s not _nothing_, Mr Barrow,” James commented, waiting for the rest, a vicious smile on his lips. He usually was gentler with the innocent people he questioned, but having Alec around for a few days had contaminated him.

“I didn’t believe he was a journalist at first, for he looked like some sort of tramp. His clothes were old and not very neat, if you know what I mean. But then… then he talked to me and he was posh, really posh, so I believed him!”

“But apart from the clothes, Mr Barrow, what did he look like?”

“He had glasses and messy black hair. Not very neat, as I said.” James frowned and the man panicked for a second, agitating his hands before him in a pleading way. “I don’t remember much more, but a few days later I’ve received an article again, by the mail this time, but signed by a Q again. But the _Guardian_ told me not to print anything from him ever more. There was a mistake, they said.”

James’s entrails squeezed at the words. “Do you still have this letter, by any chance?”

The man froze for a second before his brown pupils turned to a desk at the back of the room. James nodded and followed him closely as the man rummaged through his papers.

“They told him I could get rid of it, but I usually keep the originals for a week or so, just the time to correct any errors here and there. I’m just being thorough, you see,” the man explained before giving James an envelope.

“I see,” he replied, taking the envelope and looking at it.

No address, of course, only a stamp and the name of the printing shop in a delicate handwriting. Interesting, James thought while the corner of his mouth curled into a half-smile. A quick look at the inside of the envelope confirmed the agent that Barrow had not lied – there were an article in there, along with a note written with the same care, giving the printer instructions.

“Well, Mr Barrow, thank you for your precious help. I’d advise you to be more careful the next time a suspicious-looking pseudo journalist knocks at your door.” He paused, petting the side of his coat where the old man was sure a gun was. “Rest assured that we’ll have an eye on you, Mr Barrow,” he concluded while walking to the door, purposely evasive so the man could interpret his words in the scariest way possible. The truth was that James was bluffing, knowing Barrow wouldn’t get a wink of sleep for a long time after that. “I hope we won’t have to intervene again.”

* * *

“It’s the bloke I had in mind!” James exclaimed with a triumphant flame in his usually-so-cold eyes.

Alec was smoking on the sofa, going through a letter James didn’t really care about as he smashed the envelope given by Barrow on the coffee table.

“Ain’t I the one you always have in mind?” Alec teased, tossing his letter between two cushions to have a look at what James desperately wanted him to see. “What makes you think it’s the young man you saw after the lecture?” He inquired after a brief reading of the article.

“The printer,” James replied while pouring himself a cup of tea. It was a miracle Alec was awake so soon in the morning, and even more baffling that he had taken the time to make tea. “Barrow. He gave me a little description of the man. Turns out he’s the exact man I’ve seen. Glasses, dark-haired, questionable fashion sense.”

“I bet there’re thousands of such men in London, James.”

The 00-agent sighed, exhausted. “Don’t give me the patronising James treatment.”

Alec smiled and put the envelope back on the coffee table. In spite of all the effort he made to show a seductive smile at six in the morning, James could see something was certainly bothering Alec in some sort of way.

“Now, not that I’m complaining for the early attention,” the agent began, rising his cup of tea in the air to show it to the Russian man. “But would you care to explain to me why you’re up so soon?”

“That’s exactly how you put it, James,” Alec replied, swaggering as always. “I made you breakfast, knowing you’d be starving and upset and very very nosey.”

James snorted, deciding not to insist as he knew he’d need more tea if he wanted to go through the vaudeville which was Alec’s life. More tea or some vodka martini.

“Aren’t you about to thank me for the incredible contact I got you?” Alec added after some time, getting up and filling a cup of tea for himself. On his way to the kettle, his hips brushed past James’s in a manner the other man would described as not so innocent. Yet he was used to Alec’s shenanigans and knew better than to grant importance to them – they were the mere attestation of the childish shapes his libido always took.

“England thanks you very much indeed.” If it were a game Alec wanted to play, James was willing to keep up with that fluff. Alec opened a dramatically wide mouth, feigning shock. “I want to get my money’s worth.”

“Fair enough. What are we going to do now, then? A sketch we pin around London with a big ‘wanted’ in capital letters? I’m not sure the little speccy genius you’re after will take the bait. Do I need to remind you how he outran you a week ago? Pretty impressive.”

James grinded his teeth, while Alec took a sip of tea, a conquering smile on his lips. “Barrow said something interesting, which confirms what Mallory told me already. This Q, his clothes might look shabby, Barrow said he was well-spoken. _Posh_, he said. And so I’d like to have a look at some university records, pictures, anything from a couple years ago. If he can speak some African dialects, it means he’s been taught so, one way or another. Or he’s connected to some statesman in Kenya – a father, an uncle, anybody.”

“So what you’re saying is that we’re looking for a posh well-educated young man pretending to be poor, messing around to jeopardise his father’s position in the government, seeking revenge for undergoing such a terribly flush life?” Alec snorted, his Russian accent suddenly reappearing as to emphasise all his disdain for such narratives. “I think you should stop reading the _Union Jack._” 

“And _I_ think you two have more in common than you think,” James smirked, the rim of his cup pressing against his lips when Alec’s green eyes looked up at his friend to cast a dark glare. “Unpatriotic ideas, to begin with.”

“It’s funny how you can call unpatriotic a man who isn’t even born here,” was all Alec replied before downing his tea as though it was nothing but a glass of the cheapest vodka. “I’ll consider your offer in my sleep” he added, already walking to the sofa.

“What offer?”

“The offer of an advance if I manage to find the man you’re looking for,” Alec smiled, lying on the sofa and closing his eyes in what James believed to be the most annoying manner.

“Certainly not,” he replied under his breath, his eyes fixing on Alec’s face as the latter’s smile faltered, his features relaxing more and more while he was slowly drifting to sleep.

The last ten years were visible on his face, some wrinkles drawing delicate patterns in the outer corner of his eyes. His skin didn’t seem as supple as it once had been and the large burn on the right side of his face had finally killed what had remained of his innocence. Not that James believed there had been such a thing as innocence at some point in Alec’s life, his whole childhood nothing but a succession of traumas, death and destruction. Yet when they had first met, on the field, both working for the SIS, Alec’s body didn’t yet bear any visible mark of his low-life’s past. He had told him everything one night when they were sharing a bed in a crappy hotel in Germany, their limbs heavy with their last climax and the exhaustion of their mission. He had told him about his dead parents in Central Russia, the orphanage, the unknown reasons leading him to England someday, when a group of Brits had walked into the dormitories, speaking a language he had no idea about.

All of those little things seemed contained in the marbling on his right cheek, the inability to erase the past or to go ahead.

Silently, once he was sure the other man was asleep, James fished the letter from between the two cushions, where Alec had tossed it before. He unfolded it just to realise it was written in hurried Cyrillic. It bore no address, just a queer name which made James frown once he managed to decipher it. _Janus_.

And at the end of the message, a winged arrow.

“Damn, Alec,” James whispered as warmth rose to his face. “What have you got yourself into…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for keeping up with me!   
Tell me what you think about it so far, I'd like to know!  
Until the next time, take care!


	4. The father and the son

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “In all honesty, I don’t think we chose the right technique, James?” Alec complained once more, his eyes not leaving some pages some SIS secretaries had surely cut off newspapers. “James?” He tried again before he looked up, his tone changing for a more concerned one, “James?”  
Alec would’ve worried if a broad grin had not blossomed on his friend’s face, revealing his white teeth and the birth of his gums. “Found him,” the 00-agent muttered with the cheeky smirk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some discoveries are to be made

_In the darkness of his closed eyes he could sense the turmoil outside. He had not yet escaped from the cosiness of his dreams, but his entrails were still clenching in the dark to the rhythm of never-ending cries and gunshots. He wished he could simply stab his own ears with his bayonet or erase from his mind all the memories of hearing and seeing anything resembling what had happened in and out of the trench. _

_Their lieutenant never ceased to remind them how strong they had to be. Don’t quiver, don’t give yourself so easily to the enemy, protect your wives and sisters, your mothers and sons – so many nouns James could not relate to, so many people to protect while the only person who mattered to him was himself. For he had nobody but himself. He had never had anybody else. _

_This time when he opened his eyes, he heard a bullet whistling in his left ear and a man – the man waiting just behind him – fell into the mud at their feet, his throat pierced and bleeding, all sorts of liquids penetrating the open wound as the man started to scream. A hand pressed against his month, and James realised only after that it was his own hand pressing against the other man’s mouth, muttering him, suffocating him. He could hear German screams, orders given and more shots, more bullets piercing through more flesh, but all James could do was pressing against his mouth so the man wouldn’t shout anymore, wouldn’t give them away. _

_There was a wheeze which James would later find proper words to qualify. A rale. The man was choking on his blood, his eyes wide with fear as he tried to take James’s hand off his mouth. James didn’t move, he didn’t not quiver just so he would protect somebody else’s wife or sister or mother, just so he would protect himself. _

_The man died soon after and James caught a glimpse of his reflection in a pond of muddy water, his blue eyes shone, deep in his face, the shadow of his first beard darkening his upper-lip and his chin. He was a man, he thought, disturbed by the leap in time that had brought him from Skyfall Lodge to the trench, from edge of his teenage years to his death. Manhood was something he had thought he would never see on his own face. Yet he was a man now, there was no telling otherwise. _

James woke up with a gasp, his eyes immediately finding the reassuring cracks in the ceiling of his bedroom. His flat, Chelsea, London, England. Home. He was home and the terrible scene he had just been through the striking vividness of reality was in fact just the product of his memory, if not his imagination. No, not his imagination, unfortunately, he told himself as he stood and walked out of his bedroom, morning coldness wrapping around his bare chest.

He passed next to Alec’s body on the sofa and poured himself a glass of milk with what remained of the previous day’s delivery. At least his SIS wage didn’t really suffer from the crisis that had begun a couple of years ago – which was one of the only advantages of working for the Crown – and he still could offer himself a flat in Chelsea and milk every day. Not that he minded milk that much. Alec had taken the liberty to laugh at him for his childlike behaviour, but Alec was also the one having gin for breakfast, so James imagined there was a chasm between them.

“It’s not morning yet,” Alec groaned from the sofa, surely woken up by the clicking of the empty milk bottle James had lain back on the kitchen counter.

“Sorry,” the latter replied without really meaning it. The intensity of his nightmare still lingering in his confused mind.

“Bad dream?” Alec immediately inquired. There was a certain lightness to his voice, as though he was well-aware of James’s difficulties to sleep, which was true in a way. They had that in common. That would have been stupid to pretend Alec was worried – worried wasn’t the word. Interested, more like so. He knew there wasn’t much to be done to soothe James’s sick memories, just patience and interest.

James hummed a vague reply and Alec nodded, sitting up on the sofa and looking at him in the darkness. James doubted he could see anything but Alec knew him all too well anyway.

“Brooding much?”

James scoffed this time, but Alec felt utterly pleased with himself and with the smile he caused to briefly blossom on James’s lips.

“I wouldn’t be brooding as much have I not found you in my living room again,” came James’s reply as he sipped his glass of milk. Despite the darkness and the distance between them, James was positive he saw Alec rolling his eyes.

“As though you didn’t know I’ve been sleeping there for the last three weeks.”

“Twenty-three days,” James corrected, matter-of-factly.

Alec groaned and pulled the cover back on his shoulders. There was an unspoken agreement between them, according to which Alec was allowed to sleep in his flat, on top of which was another agreement – the one stipulating that Alec would help him in his quest for Q – but this one, Alec seemed to purposely forget it every now and then.

The blanket though was optional. The simple shape James’s endearment had taken his time, much to Alec’s satisfaction.

“It’s still cold in here,” James added after a few seconds, for he knew deep down that a single glass of milk would not put him back to sleep that easily.

“I know it is,” Alec complained although it was very clear from the way his head tilted that he had understood his friend’s suggestion.

James wasn’t really sure what he had implied, but he was willing to take whatever Alec was about to offer. He saw him move from the sofa, the blanket still tightly secured around his broad shoulders, and when Alec passed through the moonlight bleeding through the curtains, James saw the large burn gleaming. It conferred him a fantastical appearance, like one of those fairy kings straight out of a play, almighty and equally handsome and frightening. James wasn’t afraid – fascinated, more like so. He just wasn’t ready to admit his mind was painting ridiculous metaphors for the remains of what had once been a terrible pain on Alec’s cheek.

He let his now-empty glass of milk on the side of stove, following the other man to the bedroom, finding him already rolled under the covers, not properly facing him as if their secret agreement would falter suddenly.

James laid in bed next to him, his skin tinkling from the sudden change in temperature.

“Are you in London to hide from those Russian blokes who want you dead?” he asked before Alec let out an exasperated sigh.

“Can’t we just sleep, James?” He replied, eluding the question and turning to face his companion, challenging him with his pale orbs. He didn’t even question how James had become aware of it, sparing his friend the humiliation of a show of undeserved incredulity. “Or shag? I don’t know, anything that wouldn’t involve extensive talking.”

Alec was having a hard time seeing a world in which his nights weren’t occupied with either one of the aforementioned activities. Not that he was too tired to answer James’s questions, but he had to admit their previous days had been spent going through hundreds of photographs coming from the SIS, university group or debutante balls pictures, which had been the death of the two men, since hitherto they had not made any progress. They still had a whole box of pictures to go through and Alec wasn’t pleased about it. Especially since James had relentlessly refused to give him the other half of the payment. 

“I’d rather avoid extensive talking too,” James said, running a hand through his blond hair, massaging one of his temples before giving up on the idea of having a good night. “You could just answer me and we’d immediately proceed to the much more satisfactory part.”

To that Alec sniggered, rolling on his back and resting his head on his crossed arms. “Wouldn’t it kill the mood if I just told you I’m in a right mess?”

James knew that already so he remained silent, hoping, without actually believing it, that his friend would grow more loquacious. 

“There’s nothing to worry about though,” Alex conceded with an air James didn’t like. He wouldn’t go as far as calling it lying, but there was a fair amount of self-persuasion in Alec’s words. “Soon I’ll be off the hook.”

“Is it the money I owe you that you need?”

“Oh, James,” Alec burst into laughter, his mirth shaking the mattress. “I need way more than what you owe me.” Unfortunately the honest reply failed to reassure James who opened his mouth to protest when Alec added, “My debts are incommensurable.”

Big word.

James remained silent for a little longer.

“Honestly, James, I’d rather shag right now,” Alec concluded, his laughter dying on his lips as his eyes met James’s in the darkness of the room.

If it weren’t for Alec’s callous hand brushing his chest under the sheet, James would have protested, saying he didn’t want it anymore. The truth was elsewhere.

* * *

“Call it whatever you want, I _can’t_ bear this type of behaviour,” Alec repeated, letting some picture he had already examined drop on the wooden floor of James’s living-room.

He was tired of looking for a speccy young man, tired of sitting against the couch’s foot, tired of hearing James muttering nonsensical things across the coffee table. He was a practical man, not one to stay afternoons indoor going through photographs. James was merciless with him, extremely demanding and his demeanour had sunk from pouting to actual monstrosity. Alec was sure his friend was slowly turning into M and he feared that if their research weren’t fruitful, James might resort to other means. Frightening ones.

“You’re a snob,” James echoed in a mirthless laughter, tossing a picture of old Tories on the side, where dozens of others already lied.

“But how can you imagine those privileged wankers are genuinely interested in us? It would only make sense they’re pretending. What do rich people want but more wealth, James? Have you ever seen an aristocrat begging to lose his power?” Alec paused to present a picture of young scholars to James, who shook his head when he didn’t recognise Q. “This chap, he’s having a crisis. Hating his father, refusing his old views. This is nothing but provocation, really. It _has_ to be.”

James shrugged, not interested in debating the worth of Q’s fight with Alec, for the latter had particular opinions, opinions which could cost him a lot. Which had already cost him a lot. His position in the SIS, to begin with.

Not that James disagreed. There was in fact a certain amount of inequalities that he himself couldn’t bear. Not to the point of actually voicing his views, like Alec did, and rightly so, he thought. But working for a government in times of utter despair left James slightly uncomfortable.

“Maybe I’m condescending,” Alec conceded, his eyes scanning a photograph of a meeting. “It’s irreconcilable. Even though what he truly wants _now_ is equality between men, there’s no way he would be willing to extend the idea to a proper…equality.”

James didn’t know what prevented Alec from quoting Marx at this moment – perhaps the fact that Alec had probably not read Marx but heard about his theories and seen their questionable applications in certain places. James had himself attended several meetings after the war, but never had he been completely convinced, nor had he believed that such tremendous changes were possible. He suspected Alec to be equally disappointed by the Eastern politics, frustrated to always stay a no-mark, deprived of any sort of financial security, always seeking money and waking up at night with the sudden fear of having lost everything.

“You’re just jealous,” James whispered with a smirk, knowing Alec would burst into rage at the words which had been used by his friend so many times over the years, every time they were having this conversation, to be fair. “Because _he_, this Q, he has the means to get some papers printed. He has a voice. Meanwhile you’re just running away from some bloody murderers you provoked.”

Alec’s tongue clicked, not giving James the satisfaction of an ardent comeback. He remained silent for a little while, yet James could see he was actually dying to reply to his defiance.

“Still I think you should’ve beheaded your king a long time ago,” he mumbled nonetheless, thinking James wouldn’t hear him. He of course did. But did nothing but smile, amused.

Other faces succeeded before Alec’s unimpressed eyes. Old men, most of the time, not quite the description James had given of the dark-haired spectacled young man. The SIS had made a terrible job at selecting pictures of those bright young things, most of the photographs they had to deal with portrayed elderly politicians, decrepit tradesmen and their equally uninteresting offspring. Nothing exciting compared to the mysterious youth they were after. James had even gone as far as mentioning the strange beauty of the suspect, which had not helped Alec the slightest – James’s tastes in women and men had always been eclectic.

“In all honesty, I don’t think we chose the right technique, James?” Alec complained once more, his eyes not leaving some pages some SIS secretaries had surely cut off newspapers. “James?” He tried again before he looked up, his tone changing for a more concerned one, “James?”

Alec would’ve worried if a broad grin had not blossomed on his friend’s face, revealing his white teeth and the birth of his gums. The picture James held turned between his fingers as to enable Alec to see a young couple in their Sunday best, standing in a ballroom. “Found him,” the 00-agent muttered with the cheeky smirk.

* * *

“W. Q. Symes,” James let out with a sigh of triumph as he tossed the picture of the debutante ball on the coffee table. They had just received Tanner’s report in the mailbox, two pages of neat typed up secret information probably extracted through dubious means. “Youngest son of Lord Richard Symes, Viscount of Lawthern, a Tory. Born in 1905, studied in Eton _and_ Oxford, like his two older brothers, John and Edward, the second died during the war.”

The last words drew a crease in James’s forehead. It meant something to him to see those pieces of information printed on a white paper sheet. It made him think about the tiny potentiality that he could have died in that infernal trench too. That sort of consideration, so early in the morning, made his stomach clench slightly. 

“John Symes, the eldest son, already sits in the House of Lords and he apparently rules over his father’s land _with an iron hand_. Tanner underlined this twice,” James chuckled, before reading further. “Little information on the third boy, unfortunately. He studied all sorts of things in Oxford. Politics, law, philosophy. Nothing peculiar.”

“Really, James, I wish I were wrong. But my imagination, or should I say, my intuition, already drove me to this conclusion. The young man we’re looking for is simply throwing a tantrum.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about it if I were you,” James said as he was silently reading more. “He broke his engagement with Louisa Fairbanks, the girl on the picture, two years ago and he… disappeared.”

“Do you mean that Tanner simply had no more information available? That wouldn’t be new,” Alec mocked, lighting a cigarette, much to James’s annoyance.

“No, no, he truly disappeared. According to Tanner, the line of succession to his father’s estate changed, placing two of his cousins before him.” James looked up at Alec with a knowing smile. “A bit harsh for a simple change of heart, innit?”

“What about it? Should we pay a visit to that Lord Symes?” The other man offered, teasingly balancing his cigarette between his lips.

“Once more, Alec, your intuition never fails to amaze me,” he sniggered.

* * *

Paying a visit to Lords and other members of the Parliament was not what 00-agents were meant to do. They were usually advised not to. Advised here meaning ordered not to at risk of _serious_ penalty. And although James’s patience was running thinner and thinner each day, he wasn’t ready to threaten his career like that. Alec on the contrary was very incline to jeopardise his friend’s position for the sake of “going straight to the point”, as he had put it.

So there was James, dressed in his best suit, waiting for Miss Moneypenny to call him in. Mallory was smoking a cigar with Lord Symes in his office, the patronising exclamations of the older man sometimes making it through the heavy wooden door. Geez, did James hate that sort of individuals. So full of themselves, never missing an opportunity to belittle the new man.

“Bond,” the woman called once she was dismissed from Mallory’s office. “They are waiting for you.”

James smiled to her, imagining the terrible looks she had had to bear while she was surrounded by two of the most power-thirsty men in Britain, and stood up, taking one final breath before stepping into the office. It was a bold choice Mallory had made, letting a simple secret agent submit personal questions to a viscount. The cigar and the glass of scotch James could see in his hands were as many indications of Mallory trying to ready his guest.

“Lord Symes, may I introduce you to one of my most prominent agents, Mr Bond. James, please meet Lord Symes.”

“I’ve heard a great deal about you, sir,” James replied, tilting his head as his hand shook Symes’s, letting him grip it a bit too forcefully. _Tensed, perfect_, James thought.

After that, while Mallory was explaining the situation to the man, avoiding certain details and blatantly alternating the truth so the secrecy of the SIS was not threatened by a seventy-year-old Tory, James observed him from the corner of his eyes, studying his posture in his seat, the expensive tailored suit and the walking stick whose knob was richly engraved with his viscountcy’s coat of arms. James had seen dozens of men like that commanding him during the war, sending poor innocent souls to death without ever staining their uniforms.

“What we wondered, Lord Symes,” Mallory kept on speaking, “is where your youngest son is.”

The old man blemished, some smoke from his cigar escaping his parted lips. “I have no idea, Mallory. Nor do I wish to have any. My relationship with Winslow came to an end two years ago.”

“When you disinherited him?” James jumped into the conversation, causing his boss’s eyes to throw daggers at him. “Or was it before?”

Lord Symes took a deep breath, surely used to this sort of interruptions in politics.

“You see, Mr Bond, I am certain you will understand what matters I, an honest and virtuous man, am left facing. After my wife died eight years ago and after the war took one of my sons, I thought nothing could sadden me more. For there is no such pain for a father than to imagine your son going through agony and no such pain for a husband than to see your beloved wife die prematurely. I thought, Mr Bond, that the rest of my life would be spent surrounded by my children’s care and respect. Yet the utter disgrace my youngest son, who I no longer consider my son, displayed in times of suffering is, I deem, and rightly so, intolerable.”

“But I’m afraid, Lord Symes, that for the benefit of this enquiry we need more details,” Mallory said, apologising several times for his lack of discretion. “For we believe this might help us stop a very serious case threatening several layers of our government.”

“There are certain things, Mallory, that a man of my standard simply cannot say. I wish you could content yourself with the fact that following his unnatural betrayal I asked Winslow to disappear, since he could no longer be a part of this righteous family. I hope those words will not cross the threshold of this office, for the proceedings he exposes himself to, choosing that path, are not to stain my reputation. I know intelligent men like you already know what I am referring to, that shouldn’t be named in here.”

James nodded, feigning a compassion. If Q was what Lord Symes claimed he was, this element would be of little interest for their so-called enquiry. James simply felt a wave of understanding, not for the father, but for the son, for those were feelings he could relate to.

As soon as Lord Symes left the office and let the door bang against the framework, Mallory leaned against his desk, blowing away some smoke. “Sodomite,” he said with an air of disdain. “Be careful with this information, James, this is a serious accusation here.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!  
I hope you enjoyed it. Tell me what you think about it in the comments!  
Q will come (back) soon enough.


	5. To Portsmouth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: this chapter features a repetition of the word ‘sodomite’ which could almost be called an alliteration if only other words didn’t get in the way of my little homage to Evelyn Waugh’s favourite term. *wink wink*

“Winslow?” Alec exclaimed before bursting into laughter, and rightfully so, James gathered with a smirk curling the side of his mouth. “And what about the Q? What does it stand for?” When James shrugged in respond, Alec sniggered, “probably something equally ridiculous.”

Of all the newly found elements he had brought back from Mallory’s office earlier, James wouldn’t have expected Alec to be the most surprised about the name of their future… victim. What had struck the 00-agent the most was the latest information Mallory had so bluntly revealed at the end of their interview with Lord Symes. _Sodomite_, the word kept on turning round and round in his mind, but Alec wasn’t fazed the slightest.

The quintessence of a father’s cruelty. The hard reality of the society they lived in.

“Quentin?” Alec tried from the sofa where once again he was lying in all the splendour of his laziness and daily scrounging.

Where were they brought to, those whom the police caught? For how long were they kept?

“Quincey?”

There were rumours that even James couldn’t ignore, rumours of treatments and experiments led on so-called volunteers affected by the disease, or whatever scientists named it. The most frightful aspect of it to the agent was that he could himself qualify for such tests.

“Qu… Qu… Quintus?”

“What if it’s just a revenge?” he asked his friend who was still mirthfully listing names out loud.

“Of course that’s a revenge, I thought we had already established that,” came Alec’s snarky reply.

“Isn’t it a desperate cause? If the SIS catches him, they could jail him for so many things. Anti-patriotism, perversion…”

“As far as I know, you don’t make of a sceptic a political prisoner,” Alec smiled on the sofa. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

James supposed Alec had had – and was still regularly having – his fair share of perversion too.

“You didn’t write columns in the local newspaper.”

“Maybe I should’ve,” he grinned in return and James rolled his eyes.

A part of James had grown strangely attached to the young man they were looking for and this connection – no matter how unprofessional it seemed – was only increased by their newly-found common point. James was not a _sodomite_ per se, nor did the term applied to Alec, but he had enjoyed the company of men on more occasions than he could count. It didn’t diminish his attraction to women, it completed it.

* * *

Deep into the recollection of a song he believed long-forgotten, Alec was nursing his second glass of gin of the morning, sat on the sofa in the dark. The pale light coming from the window in this foggy morning of March reflected on the translucent liquidity of the beverage in his hand, conferring to the moment a depth the former 00-agent contemplated with sad eyes.

“_It’s not yet evening, but I have taken a tiny little nap, and a dream came to me._” 

He washed his Slavic syllables with some gin, softly humming the beginning of the next verse, before he swallowed. _“-dancing about, beneath the bold brave youth_.” *

His voice died in the middle of the song and Alec stared at the floor for a long while, not enough gin in his glass after all, it was never enough to wash the bitter taste of the past off his brain.

James had left earlier in the morning after a call from Tanner and it had made it all the more convenient for Alec since James despised his sudden bouts of melancholy so much.

The flat fell into silence until Alec heard something falling on the floor next to the front door. A peculiar sound breaking the silence, but he wanted a little bit longer, pouring himself another glass of gin to enjoy on the sofa. When he finally stood up, the reason lying on the empty bottle in his hand, he saw the strange lizard-like shape of what had fallen from the mail slot. His heart missed a beat as he carefully walked closer until he recognised a tied-up rosary, the beads shining in the morning light.

_They_ had found him.

* * *

“There’s a ferry in Portsmouth leaving tonight for Kenya,” Mallory began as Tanner was fumbling with some papers for James to read. “I want you to check if there’s any passenger looking like our little Symes trying to come aboard.”

James nodded, smirking at the prospect of finally getting out of his flat for some more interesting field work. Wet work, maybe.

“The strategy changed, 007. Now that we know he’s a person of interest, our goal isn’t to kill him, but to make him shut up,” Mallory explained, lighting a cigar and giving James a heavy look. “Deliver him to us. Intact. No matter how uninterested Lord Symes may be, the SIS cannot possibly hurt him. Even though he’s now… _fallen_, Winslow Symes is not to be coarsely slaughtered in some narrow street. M will be the one coming to decision on the matter. Am I clear?”

“Very much so, sir,” James nodded again, half relieved he wouldn’t have to cold-bloodily slay the young man he had grown interested in. He had so many questions to ask him first. He needed answers just so he would be able to smash them into Alec’s face to prove him he had been wrong.

Mallory scoffed at the agent’s sycophantic reply.

“We believe it might be a lead,” Tanner said, joining the conversation as he handed Bond some more papers about the type of merchandise the boat also transported. “There isn’t a large amount of ferries taking passengers that leave for the east coast of Africa. The last one left last month, so it doesn’t coincide with your encounter with Q. There’s still the possibility he left for France and took another boat somewhere in the meantime. All in all it might be a red herring.”

“Thank you, Tanner,” Mallory intervened with an excided sigh, some smoke leaving his mouth in the process.

James avoided his superior’s glare using the papers as a distraction. The ferry transported heavy weapons to the colonies, along with tobacco, manufactured boxes of tea and two dozens of passengers. Probably civilians who had been given the opportunity to flee obscure skulduggeries to start anew somewhere in Africa.

“The boat will make a stopover in Cairo in a few days’ time,” Tanner added after a few seconds of silence. “Then head to Kenya with less goods and less passengers. But it doesn’t matter to the mission, does it?”

James offered the SIS worker a pitiful smile when Mallory sighed again. After some more banalities and the exposition of train timetables, James stood up, ready to leave the room when Mallory’s voice came from behind his back again, “I hope this is the last time I see you about that Q, 007. This mission is taking impossibly long.” The office smelled like tobacco, a thin cloud of smoke floating above their head. “Bloody _ages_.”

A few minutes later, James was walking out of the SIS building, his conversation with Moneypenny playing repeatedly in his head. This woman had some wit and her deadpan jokes would always make the special agent burst into laughter, even after the most stressful meetings with their boss.

Suddenly he felt a hand clenching around the wool of his coat and dragging him aside from the back door of the SIS.

“Did someone follow you here?” came a familiar voice when James’s hand was already wrapping around his gun.

“Alec, for God’s sake!” he groaned before putting his revolver back under his coat. “What are you doing here?”

“Did someone follow you?” Alec insisted, his face paler than usual and his tone… James couldn’t describe what his tone sounded like, but it triggered a shiver down his spine. “We can’t stay in London, they know where you live!”

“Who?!” James exclaimed, pushing Alec back against the bricks of the wall when the other man kept on clenching his coat aggressively. He could smell the nauseating reek of alcohol in his friend’s breath and his voice turned sterner. “Who, Alec, who?”

“Them!” The other man echoed, now gesticulating, his own gun very visible at his belt. It was the first time since their reunion in that pub in Soho that James saw his friend carrying a weapon. He did not doubt there were others hidden in his coat and around his thighs. “Dmitri and his men, they’re coming for me, but they know where you live!”

James’s grip loosened around Alec’s collar. Obviously.

“They’re probably watching us right now, you cannot stay in London!”

The 00-agent watched his friend with tired eyes, the effect of alcohol clearly visible in each of his motions. He’d like to say it was nothing but another fit of drunkenness, but there was something terribly true in the fear crouching in his glassy green eyes.

“Listen to me,” Alec pleaded. “They’re no joker! They will kill us both if we don’t leave immediately.”

James frowned – it meant something that Alec didn’t trust his own abilities to protect himself.

“To hell the mission, to hell the money, we simply cannot stay here!”

“You’re drunk,” James replied, regaining his composed self and brushing off his friend’s hands from his coat. “You’re drunk and I’m on a mission.”

Alec’s mouth gaped. Something soft fell from his features, leaving his face like a blank canvas. “For fuck’s sake, James, don’t tell me England is so dear to you!”

They had had this conversation before, this row, Alec accusing him of having no critical mind and James arguing that he couldn’t be in constant opposition with everything. How exhausting it might be, to be Alec, stateless and disillusioned. They had had this conversation right before Alec had been sacked for the same reason Q was being searched right now. After that, Alec had disappeared for almost ten years and there was nothing in the world that would enable them to get this time back, to get their brotherly love, the innocence of their unconditional feelings back.

James couldn’t take the risk. Not again. Not ever again. “Oh, spare me,” he spat back.

* * *

They had been smoking on the dock, watching workers loading the ferry for the last two hours. Sailors in uniforms, dockers and some civilians, but no one resembling a speccy young man with tousled black hair.

Alec had nursed his hungover in the train, resenting James a lot for the third-class ticket, his face turning different shades of green along the way. After some pork pies at the local pub, James could tell his friend was feeling better. The chaotic energy resulting from his latest death threat had faltered with every mile away from London.

As they were waiting in the harbour, Alec had told him more about his business with the branch of the bratva in Petrograd, how it had turned sour a few months earlier and hence his coming to London, after many peregrinations throughout Western Europe. An obscure matter of arms trafficking, of Alec running away with more money that James could imagine and losing all of it in women, booze and gambling.

Where was the young man James had met in Riga after the war? Where were his fresh cockiness and his appetite for life? His boyish smile, his romantic ideas? The Alec he faced now was the logical continuation of his earlier vices, but still… Still James kept on wondering why and how.

There was nothing but the brokenness within.

“There, someone’s coming,” the Russian man said lighting another cigarette and watching the dock from where they were hiding.

James looked at the thin silhouette walking towards the ferry, a heavy, worn-out suitcase weighting in his hand. His eyes squinted, his heart drumming in his chest. So Mallory, or whoever in SIS who was responsible for the information, had been right. Such coincidence seemed straight out of a Conan Doyle’s book, yet there stood the object of their relentless inquiry, the reason of their waiting on the dock, shivering in their coats. A large grin blossomed on James’s lips, a rare and true grin of happiness, of victory. It was the end of a mission and the double-0 agent couldn’t wait to move on.

Yet suddenly a loud honk filled the night and the young man on the dock hurried to the deck, holding his ticket firmly in his left hand, as though – and that was undoubtedly the case – his life depended on it. Alec stiffened at the idea that they would miss him somehow, so close to their goal, as the boat would pull into the bay.

“Time to come aboard,” James whispered, tossing his cigarette in the black water of the port.

* * *

It had all been too easy, it seemed. The articles, the money, the flight to Africa. Not everything had gone according to plan, and he rightfully thought he had caught the attention of the wrong person, that blond man waiting outside the university the other day. Not that his trip back to his homeland had not purposely been for the sake of drawing attention, yet the blond man seemed bothersome.

But in the end he was victorious. He knew he shouldn’t be rejoicing until he’d berth in Mombasa, but with so many bills in his suitcase and a notebook filled with new contacts, new ways of blackmailing whoever he’d fancy, he was prone to a little celebration.

With a petulant adjusting of his glasses on the bridge of his nose, he made his way towards the little cabin he had been able to book at the last minute. It had been three days since he had last had a proper night of sleep. The cabin bunk would be nothing like his bed back in Eastbourne Palace, but he had long since cast this memory out of his mind anyway. He knew he would fall asleep as soon as his head would hit the pillow, safe thanks to the key locking the door. Well, that was until a barrel poke the spot in-between his shoulder blades.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There, the Fab Three are all-together now.  
I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Comment and leave kudos if you did!  
Also, if you didn't read it already, I published a OS dealing with James's and Alec's 1st mission together in Riga. I'll be posting more ficlets about our trio (or about one particular character) in the future, along with the not-so-regular 'main fic' of course. :)  
Bye bye 
> 
> * The song Alec sings is a folk song called 'Oy to ne vecher' (oh not tonight) which is about a Cossack rebel of the 17th century. Thought it fitted to Alec's story in the canon.


	6. Louts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "A second later, Q reached for his gun in the pocket of his trench coat, his fingers tightly clenching around the grip, as he turned around, pointing it towards the man who was threatening him with his own revolver. Except there wasn’t one but two guns pointing at him, and Q’s greenish eyes widened ever so slightly."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, it's been a while! Consider this your Christmas present, because there's nothing less sure than my regularity! Enjoy and comment if you liked this latest addition!

A second later, Q reached for his gun in the pocket of his trench coat, his fingers tightly clenching around the grip, as he turned around, pointing it towards the man who was threatening him with his own revolver. Except there wasn’t one but two guns pointing at him, and Q’s greenish eyes widened ever so slightly.

“I advise you obediently follow us, … _Q_,” said the blond man who had followed him around London the day of the conference.

The other man, the taller and bulkier of the two, was unknown to the young man, but not less threatening. The barrels pointing at him did not even shook with apprehension or anticipation, whereas Q’s had grown slightly unsure, and thus in spite of his training. They were professionals, he gathered with contempt.

He lowered his revolver, although keeping it firmly in his hand, looking directly in the men’s eyes, his index finger trembling on the trigger.

“Who are you?” Q asked, carefully wrapping his words in a blanket of disdain. “You seem to know my name, so what are yours, for obviously _you_ came with backup this time?”

The thin pair of lips revealed a set of perfectly white teeth that didn’t escape James. His barrel was still pointing at Q, joined by Alec’s, who was considering the young man before them with little respect, his green eyes inspecting every aspect of his clothes and posture, looking for a sign.

With a swift motion, Alec took the revolver from the speccy man’s hand, although it was clear the latter had given up on using it against them.

“Hands up. Take us to your rooms,” James barked, as his friend was sliding Q’s gun in the pocket of his coat and getting hold of his suitcase, an unsurprisingly heavy object.

“So early on,” Q dramatically sighed, holding his hands up as instructed, and walking to his cabin which was at the end of the corridor. If he slowed down, he could feel the tip of one of their barrels poking his back and he was having a hard time not believing they would shoot him on his bed, there, in the hold of an old ferry departing for Africa.

Alec and James shared a glance as they were following their major suspect – the young man seemed so unfazed it was hard to believe he wasn’t guilty of something. He had opted for an expression of profound boredom, causing some more sympathy on James’s side. The SIS’s preys weren’t usually behaving like that, some shots were exchanged and there were pantomimes of fights or resisting.

“There we are, _gentlemen_,” Q exclaimed as they were facing a door at the end of the corridor, an unstylish piece of wood which would undoubtedly reveal an equally unstylish room, as all cabins were more often than not.

“Open the bloody door,” Alec let out, his expression still so stern and aggressive.

James noticed how much of a contrast it was, compared to the distress the former 006 had been in that day. Alec had regained his field persona, fearless and greatly rude, closer to a wolf chasing his prey than a proper gentleman. If Alec had ever been one before, that was to say. 

“Come on,” Alec barked, his revolver pressing against the young man’s bony shoulder, as his patience was running thinner and thinner.

Q tried to control the imperceptible shaking of his hand around the key as he slid it inside the hole. Control he should be able to put on in this situation, control he had trained himself to always maintain no matter what. He reminded himself the numerous plans he had plotted over the last few months – Q always made sure there was a backup plan, yet his tired brain didn’t seem to remember at that moment.

With a groan, Q pushed he cabin’s door open. There was nothing more frustrating to him than a numb brain, a slow reply of his memory, for he knew that he had what many of his tutors had called ‘potential’.

But was there an escape when two bulky henchmen of the king pointed revolvers at you? Q wasn’t so sure anymore.

“Well,” Q said with a sly smile as they all stepped into the room. He heard the closing door behind them and he took it as a signal for him to turn around and face his assailants. “They did mention the crossing would be rough, but I wasn’t expecting such a welcoming committee.”

There, Q thought with some satisfaction, he was in control again.

The taller of the two men leaned against the door and crossed his arms on his chest, his eyes growing even more threatening now that his gun wasn’t aiming at Q’s heart any longer. The blue-eyed man, the one Q was positive had followed him after the conference in London, relaxed his jaw and slid his revolver back under his coat. A moment of silence followed before the young black-haired man sighed.

“Well? It seemed you had some sort of purpose back there, right?”

The other two shared an amused glance, much to the other’s frustration. They didn’t look very astute in Q’s opinion, but still not obtuse enough to behave like two simple heavies.

“Who brought you there?” He asked, waving his hands in the air in helplessness before they fell back on his side and tapped against his thighs. 

“I was certain _we_ were to ask the questions,” the blond said, before the other man set Q’s suitcase on the bed beside them and inspected the opening with a raised eyebrow.

“That’s a special latch,” Q told him with an expression of intense boredom. If they did not shoot him right away, he was sure he would die out of frustration, he thought as he looked at the man examining the closing mechanism with nothing but the intend to force it open. Louts, all of them.

“Then we need a special key,” Alec said, taking a pocket knife out of his coat.

Q sighed, his frustration hitting the roof. The blond man facing him, the one who Q suspected was the one who was most likely to cause troubles, chuckled lowly.

“It came to our attention, Mr Symes-“ he began before being interrupted.

“Just Q.” His dark-haired interlocutor was still 

“Well, it came to our attention, just Q, that you started a little war against our government.” Q shrugged, his eyes squinting when Alec’s knife angrily attacked the closing of his suitcase, leaving nothing but a scratch on the already worn-out leather. “We wouldn’t have minded, were we busy elsewhere. But, you see, even trained assassins suffer from down-times here and there.”

This one definitely had a good turn of phrase, Q smiled, although still bewildered by the third man’s repetitive assaults on his suitcase. “I understand.”

James’s lips turned into a smirk when he saw an amused expression spreading over the younger man’s features. Other missions were not usually like so – first, he had kissed working with Alec goodbye, secondly, those he was paid to kill did not cleverly banter like Q did.

“We were to kill you,” the other man said, drawing James’s attention to his friend who was knelt next to the bed, unsuccessfully working on the lock. “But Daddy vetoed the action.”

“Daddy,” Q replied, frowning slightly before it came to him that those two men were talking about _his _father and not the head of some sort of society they apparently belonged to with a fervent – and confusing - sense of familial duty. “So Lord Symes send you here,” he concluded, clicking his tongue. He supposed it would end like that, his father interfering again. “So what is it that you’re going to do if not kill me? Place me under house arrest? In jail? Lobotomise me? Wouldn’t it be quicker to simply pull the trigger? I gather that is nothing that you aren’t accustomed to. So, go ahead, throw my body in the Channel, nobody will ask for it.” Q would have gone on and on about the diverse ways for the both of them to end his life if Alec’s insistence on his suitcase had not exhausted him to the highest degree. “I’ve told you this is a special latch!” He exclaimed, his bonny fingers spreading with powerlessness.

“Give him the suitcase, Alec,” James sighed, gesturing to Q as he felt his friend’s glare passing over his body. One did not simply give orders to him. “Now, open it.”

“Thank you,” Q obsequiously replied as he took his suitcase and set it aside under two expecting pairs of eyes.

Alec gritted his teeth at the tone the younger man used, the small mocking smile dancing on his lips despite the fact that two killers were now harmlessly threatening him. Perhaps they shouldn’t have lowered their guns, Alec thought with pursed, disapproving lips. How many times had the young man been in such a situation before?

Q let a few seconds of hesitation settle between the moment he was handed the suitcase and the moment he would have to open it. “What do you expect to find inside?” He asked the two men, genuinely perplex himself. His only possessions of a sentimental value he had left in Kenya - among other things - and his gun was now in the coat of his aggressors. “Written avowals and a monstrous amount of money? I’m afraid, gentlemen, that you’ll be disappointed.”

“Will we?” James snorted, pressing the speccy fellow with a curved eyebrow. Alec, on the other hand, would not hesitate to use his gun to make Q comply. Who needed working knees when travelling on a boat?

Now backed into a corner, Q cursed himself and rolled the latch between two fingers, just the right way, until a distinctive pop caused the other men to smirk like two wolves. As soon as the lock gave up, James grabbed the suitcase and opened it, several bundles of notes falling to the floor in the process.

Alec knelt and let out a Russian curse as he took a wad in his hands. “That’s a bloody lot, James.”

The other man hummed in reply, letting a dozen of bundles fall again while rummaging through the suitcase. Q grimaced when his clothes joined the notes on the floor, along with some letters, a couple of books and a photograph. There wasn’t much he could do now but look at the mess they were making in his cabin and count down until the moment they would find his notebook. He cast a glare at the man with the slight Slavic accent as he piled the bundles up with envy. Q could see him calculate and a smile spreading over his face. Louts.

“For a suitcase which was supposed to disappoint us, Q, I don’t find myself very disappointed,” the shorter one, James, Q reckoned, said with a satisfied little rictus.

Alec kept on counting until he whistled between his front teeth. “Thirty thousands.”

“Thirty-one thousands,” Q corrected, out of habits. There wasn’t a lot he could do now but nag now.

“And this,” James added, letting the suitcase, now perfectly emptied of its content, heavily fall onto the floor. He was holding the notebook he had found in the plaid lining he had ripped apart as soon as he had felt something suspiciously hard underneath. He opened it and went through the list of names and numbers – dates and amounts of money in most cases. “Contributors?” He asked, already knowing the answer to his question.

“Christmas comes early this year,” Alec commented when his look went up to meet James’s. He stood up, his fingers unwillingly leaving the pile of notes on the cabin floor, before he examined the notebook his friend still held.

Q fought to keep an unbothered expression, although he was sure his distress was perfectly blatant to the other men. He watched as his notebook was stuck into James’s inner pocket, wondering if he would soon or later have the opportunity to snatch it from him and leave. Probably not. He was outnumbered. Pathetically outnumbered. And weak, oh so weak.

“And what about now?” He asked, shrugging and gesturing to the rest of the cabin – a terribly small room that had started to pitch now that the boat had left the harbour. It was made even smaller by the presence of those two bulky men. “Cairo’s the next stop and I doubt we all fit in this bed.”

“Oh, shut it already,” Alec barked, his voice stretching with feigned exhaustion and a peculiar Slavic accent Q knew he already despised.

James looked up from the mess at his feet and stared at the bed in question – indeed very small, even for one man, nothing but a two-inch-thick mattress and a blanket. He wouldn’t have worried if only the trip to Cairo weren’t a three-day long affair. Alec and Q seemed ready to bite each other to death and although nobody would’ve suspected such a skinny fellow could inflict serious damages to someone like Alec, James showed reserve.

“You’re right,” the 00-agent admitted, stepping to the bed and sitting on it – gosh, was the mattress thin. “We’ll take the bed in turn and you’ll have the floor.”

Q’s tongue ticked again and he chose that moment to slowly sink onto his knees under watchful eyes and collect the notes and later on his clothes and his precious books back into his suitcase, leaving it open since Alec’s foot rested dangerously close to his face. Louts, louts, he cursed under his breath as he noticed his self-made collection of Swahili poems and songs had been left dog-ear by James’s mistreatments. He carefully took the photograph which the blond had tossed away without a second thought and slid it under his clothes, sparing it a sad look beforehand.

Ten years ago, draped in his family’s luxury, Q wouldn’t have imagined sleeping on some wooden floor, yet now, after months spent either in various traditional African dwellings and shabby London hotel rooms, he couldn’t care less. Especially since it meant being as far away from those men as possible. He didn’t doubt one of them would keep a lookout and the door had been locked on their way in, but at least, at the very least, he was not tied up. Fascinating how hard times changed your perspective on the idea of comfort.

“So you’re James. And you’re Alec, right?” Q said, sitting and leaning against the wall once his belongings were out of the way. James, who was spread on the bed, his eyes to the ceiling, frowned and turned his head to him, while Alec let out a groan, only confirming Q’s words. “Don’t look at me like that, you mentioned it earlier. What can I do with first names when you have guns anyway?”

Alec seemed pleased with this observation, but both of them remained silent, much to the youngest’s annoyance.

“So are we going to stay trapped in here for three days, without talking to each other?” His timber was high-pitched and unusual, almost childlike in his attempt to trick those wolves into relaxing and eventually leaving him an escape route.

“Exactly,” Alec said, before turning to his fellow. “Right, James?”

James nodded, his eyes back to the ceiling. “Right. You can do the talking, but wouldn’t it be an insult to your intellect?”

Q let out a long and plaintive sigh, wrapping his arms around his knees. The trip promised to be painfully long. Interesting as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!   
The Fab Three are together!   
Please do comment or leave kudos if you enjoyed it!   
I shall have some more time to write during December.


	7. Of his exercise in deduction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alec considered the other two men who shared the cabin with him. James was sound asleep – or so he pretended to be since his training as an agent had left him partially unable to ever enjoy an innocent night of sleep for the rest of his life. His legs were stretched on the bed, behind Alec’s back, leaving the Russian man incapable of properly leaning against the wall.

Of all the places Alec Trevelyan would have imagined finding himself in the company of two other men, the narrow cabin of a ferry to Kenya was definitely _not_ one of them. At least he believed the bratva wouldn’t track him down there. There was no apparent reason for him to go to Africa, if not the unpredictable job of his best friend. With the boat leaving Portsmouth, stronger waves at started to shake it and Alec’s mood now bore the cost of his countryside education. Even though he wouldn’t go as far as calling himself seasick, reality lied somewhere along those lines, his stomach sinking every now and then, leaving his body feeling heavy and sore with each swirl of the sea. There was what his childhood in Novonikolayevsk had not taught him, to tame a stomach which was infuriated by the waves. He knew James did not suffer the same evil, given his Scottish blood. That lucky bastard.

After an umpteenth deep breath, his pistol tightly secured in his hand, Alec considered the other two men who shared the cabin with him. James was sound asleep – or so he pretended to be since his training as an agent had left him partially unable to ever enjoy an innocent night of sleep for the rest of his life. His legs were stretched on the bed, behind Alec’s back, leaving the Russian man incapable of properly leaning against the wall. And the annoying little fellow James had been hunting down to that boat? Well, Alec was sure he was feigning slumber as well. And poorly feigning it with that!

Q’s breathing was controlled and regular and from time to time, his eyelids would flutter in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the rest of the room.

“I know you’re awake,” Alec groaned lowly, his foot pushing into the younger man’s ribs.

“And I know you’re sick,” Q replied after his face had scrunched with displeasure when the tip of the other man’s shoe had tapped his abdomen. As though sleeping on the floor wasn’t uncomfortable enough.

Alec raised an eyebrow, unbothered by the statement. Why did it matter after all? He was the one with the gun. If it were his sympathy Q was looking for, he could try and try, he would not find anything. “Shut it,” Alec replied, lazily rubbing his hand against his forehead.

Q shrugged under his small blanket, the motion reminding him all too much his body laid on nothing but old floorboards. How could Alec contemplate the option of him sleeping, when obviously anything close to rest appeared out of reach when one lied on the floor, Q bitterly thought as he arranged his folded coat under his head. The precious pillow he had paid for laid under the head of the other man who had come to get rid of him – a man who could sleep!

The more he thought about the situation, the more Q realised there was no other option but to wait for Cairo, that was to say, to wait for about three days. Only then would he break the stalemate, get his suitcase back and find a way to head southwards to Kenya. What could he do in the middle of the sea, when two henchmen looked after him day and night?

“I can see you plotting,” Alec said, sending his foot right into the younger male’s stomach, eliciting a muffled moan.

“No, you can’t,” Q replied in a contemptuous snort. The only confidence that remained in him was the one he had in his superior intellect. No matter how trained the two killers were, they would never have the intellectual upper hand.

Silence wrapped itself around them again as James rolled on the bed, not waking up from what Q could catch from his position on the floor, simply readjusting the covers around his shoulders. Before going to sleep, the younger man had seen he had kept his gun under his pillow, and the thought the action had elicited had frozen his blood in his veins.

After a few seconds though, Q had regained his initial state of apparent flippancy, just to annoy the other henchman - which had worked, of course it had. Alec was so easy to read.

"Since you're up," Q began, his greenish eyes going back to Alec, his arm curling under his head to rest more comfortably. "We can play a game."

Alec's eyebrow shifted upwards again - in disbelief, Q gathered. "No way," he simply said, holding an insult back. In spite of his being on watch Alec aspired to some silence.

"I'm usually not that talkative, but as I cannot sleep..."

Now Alec started to hate Bond for not letting Q the bed.

"Let me guess," Q began, offering a wicked grin to Alec. He had practiced said-smile over the years, greeting his father, his tutors and his brothers with it, driving them mad through the sole strength of his zygoma. "You're not just partners, he and you.”

Q had observed them, the looks, the smirks and now Alec's relaxed position on the bed which denoted more than mutual trust, like a past together, a genuine awareness of how the other's body would react. To his statement, Alec just shrugged, not giving Q the immediate satisfaction of an answer. Q didn't need his approbation anyway, he had trained himself in the analysis of other people's behaviour, for his safety as much as for his own amusement. People were like riddles and some of them were easier to solve than others.

"I appreciate the effort you put in distracting me," Alec began, all biting wit and condescending smile. "But, really, there's no need for you to make conversation, I'm not here for tea."

Q chuckled, before his lips slightly opened as he let in a soft intake of air. "And you don't even work for the same people, do you?" He began, carefully arranging his words like one put together a bouquet of flowers.

This time it made Alec frown. Q's smile grew incredibly wider, revealing his white teeth in the semi-darkness.

"Apart from your obvious Slavic accent, Russian I would say, you two do not use the same weapons." 

Once more Alec raised an eyebrow in doubt - his accent, if any, had never been referred to as 'obvious'.

"James has a Walther, a German brand, whereas you have a Nagant M1895, a revolver which was used by the Russian Army back during the Empire. It fell out of use quite recently, I must concede. The Soviet military now uses something called a TT-30 and banished Nagants because they're too old and belong to Tsarist times. Mercenaries use the Nagant now, not exclusively, you tell me and you're right. But would a British agency supply its agents with old weapons of a Belgian brand? I don't think so, which narrows my options down." Q theatrically paused, letting his interlocutor the possibility to appreciate his reasoning to its fullest. "You do not work for the same people," he repeated, concluding his little demonstration with a satisfied smirk.

Alec wanted to contradict him, saying that there could be thousand reasons for him to carry around a Belgian revolver, but Q kept on talking, swaggering around in a way that left Alec boiling with the urge to wring his neck.

"Even I noticed that, and I don't even know much about weaponry."

"On the contrary," Alec smiled bitterly, "I believe you know a lot more than what you're willing to tell us."

It had the merit of flattering Q's ego. "In fact I do." 

Alec refused to mention that Q’s revolver, which Alec now had in his possession, was nothing less than a Beretta. He also refused to comment on the old-fashioned choice it resulted in. For someone as progressive as Q, it looked like an odd parti-pris. Alec simply refused to feed the conversation in a way that would undoubtedly backfire.

“I could go on like this forever,” Q kept on bragging, toying with one of his long locks of hair, his gaze wandering around the cabin, from James’s sleeping body to the bruised knuckles of Alec’s hands, taking notes of the smallest details.

“Be my guest,” Alec replied, an amused smile threatening to curl his lips as he was waiting for the perfect moment he would be able to counterattack. Or knock him out.

“I could talk about your absence of luggage, leading me to the conclusion that your presence here is impromptu to say the least. I could dwell on your fascination for my money or that nasty scar you’ve got here.”

“Ask James, he knows all about it,” Alec snorted, rolling his head back until some of his vertebrae pleasantly cracked. The action momentarily hid the right side of his face from Q – no matter how many years separated him from the accident that had left an angry burn mark on his cheek, Alec was still self-conscious when someone was being a tad too nosey.

“Are you two going to shut it one day or not?” came James’s hoarse voice from the bed.

Two surprised heads turned to the source of the words and were met by the grumpiness of a man in his late thirties who had been woken up at an ungodly hour. Q checked the thin watch around his wrist – three in the morning.

“I’ve spent half of the night telling him his exercise in deduction was far from impressive,” Alec replied, not giving his friend the satisfaction of an apology. As far as James could remember, he had never once heard Alec apologise in his lifetime and now was surely not the moment he would.

“I’m well aware of that,” James snapped, before burying his face in his pillow. “I can hear you. Both!”

“If I may, complaining while being the one on the bed makes your tiredness hardly relevant,” Q dared, fidgeting on the floor as to display his discomfort a little bit more.

Alec snorted in agreement and James rolled his eyes, his face still pressed against his pillow, the thick material muffling the insult he quietly threw at the other two passengers. “For someone who is currently under-arrest, I find you a little too detached.”

The boat suddenly rocked on the waves, causing Alec’s hand to reach for his mouth as his face grew paler and paler. James lit the candlelight with a sigh, figuring out it would be impossible for him to go back to sleep when his friend was in that state and his prisoner that talkative. They had had nothing for dinner as it would have meant going out of the cabin and letting Q a chance to flee or draw attention to their queer little group; hence Alec would have nothing to vomit but bile, yet the risk was not worth taken.

James handed his partner a piece of cloth that had been left slightly wet and cold by the dampness in the cabin. Travelling by boat in the English early spring would never be the best option.

“I genuinely wonder what you will do to me,” Q said, averting his look and gazing at the ceiling instead, half-disgusted at the prospect of seeing or hearing someone eructing so close to him, and in a confined space to top it all. “If Lord Symes ordered you don’t kill me, then what are you going to do in Cairo? Bring me all the way back to England?”

James frowned at the younger man’s insisting on calling his own father by his title.

“And then what anyway? Is he going to kill me himself?” Q chuckled at the idea. What a delightful end it would be, being murdered by the man who had given him life. “Or are you going to put me in jail? Place me under house-arrest? In Egypt?” His voice got higher with disbelief, before sinking lower than ever as he dreaded the idea. “Oh please, I would prefer you kill me.”

“The choice isn’t ours, Q. If it were, I would’ve got rid of you and your sharp tongue much sooner,” James replied, eliciting a snort from both Alec and Q. James had tried to remain perfectly professional with the man he was paid to bring back on the British soil, but there was a sympathy he could not repress as far as Q was concerned, a strength in his detachment and his sense of humour never seemed to fail to hit the bullseye. He was aware his affection for him, or rather his lack of impassive reaction, would eventually give him away.

The boat rocked again and James sighed at the look on Alec’s face. 

“Let’s get you on the deck,” the shorter blond said and Alec did not wait any longer, his hand already fishing the key out of his pocket to unlock the door of the cabin.

When the tiny room opened on the empty corridor, Alec disappearing as soon as possible, livid as he was, Q sat up on the floor and his action was immediately followed by a metallic clicking. He turned his head to face a Walther pointing at him, the tip of the barrel so close to his face that he could almost sense on his forehead the coldness of the metal radiating from the gun.

James quietly hummed, his Walther steady in his powerful grip. It had taken less than half a second for him to retrieve the revolver from under his pillow and sit up on the bed.

“Not you.”

Once the shock passed, Q’s eyes met with his, both looks equally cold and calculating. It was a risk he was taking, Q came to think, since the door had been left ajar and any passenger wandering in the hold could witness what was going on in the cabin. It was an amateur risk, but the simple fact that James indulged in such rookie mistake told a lot about his confidence. A shiver ran down the brown-haired man as his fingers came to adjust the position of his glasses on his nose – a gesture which, he knew, denoted his lack of assertiveness, and not his usual indifference.

“Am I not allowed to be taken for a walk?” He articulated slowly, each of his syllables consisting of a step closer to the regaining of his self-confidence, feigned or not. 

“That’s definitely not in jail we’re going to lock you,” James groaned, sitting straighter on the bed and tugging on the collar of his shirt to make it fit around his shoulders a bit more nicely. All of that while not ceasing to point his Walther towards Q’s head. “But in a bloody kennel.”

“I’ve always said I preferred the company of animals to that of my family,” Q replied, already getting up as he believed he had received James’s tacit agreement. “That is why we get along so well, the three of us.”

As a comeback, James simply pressed his barrel flat against the younger man’s back, leading him quietly outside the cabin. “From now on, one word and I break your knees, tie you down and send you back to your father in a trunk.”

Instead of scaring him, the threat caused an amused smirk to blossom on Q’s lips. The prospect lacked creativity and James’s tired timber did nothing to convey a hint of credibility.

On his way out of the room, the double-0 agent grabbed Q’s coat from the floor, believing it would be freezing cold out on the deck. Was it maternal instinct, he wondered as he pushed him towards the small steel ladder, or the assurance that were Q to catch a cold, the nagging would be endless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For this chapter, I learnt more about firearms companies than I’m willing to admit. And my computer history does make me look like an NRA enthusiast.   
This chapter was entirely set in the enclosed space of the cabin, which I can understand may be boring. But stay tuned!   
That being said, thank you for reading this update and thank you to those who recently showed their support through lovely comments! You are the carbs to my body’s cells!


	8. All that is solid melts into air

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The port of Cairo opened to the world like a precious shell to the fingers of an ill-intentioned fisherman. It was not James’s first time in the city, since the ongoing weariness towards England, which the Crown commonly called ‘unrest’, caused the double-0 agent to be sent to Egypt to pay regular courtesy calls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, I’m sorry for having postponed this chapter for so long! But I wanted it to be just right (or as right as can be) and I didn’t want to dive into it without a better knowledge of what Egypt was like at the time. You should know I’ve been to several museums in London and researched a lot too, since I wanted it to be as far from a clichéd depiction of the “Orient” as possible. Yet I’m not sure I succeeded. I’m sure you don’t really care for historical accuracy and are here for the characters; but it’s important to me (and if it is for you too then I’m delighted). On that, have a good reading, tell me if you enjoyed it, scold me if you waited for a long time and have a nice week!

The port of Cairo opened to the world like a precious shell to the fingers of an ill-intentioned fisherman. It was not James’s first time in the city, since the ongoing weariness towards England, which the Crown commonly called ‘unrest’, caused the double-0 agent to be sent to Egypt to pay regular courtesy calls.

There was the deal. Half a week in Cairo and then the next boat of the marine marchande would take them to Marseille. So it had been concluded with Mallory and Tanner when James had called them on the telephone of a French café in the European neighbourhood. Once in France, it would be easier for James to be exfiltrated by the SIS and for Q to be handed over for whatever M had in mind.

Q had accepted the news with no emotion on his face, leaving both Alec and James in the latent fear of a mutiny. So as they were all walking back to their temporary housing, the two blond men’s limbs were tensed with an unpreceded apprehension, as Q’s demeanour darkened with each step

Of course, James had not said a word about the unexpected presence of a certain former agent at his side and it had remained unspoken between them two whether or not Alec would follow them to France. Where could he go then? The Bratva was still waiting for him in London, if they had not started to seek him elsewhere already – James wondered what his apartment in Chelsea looked like since they very much knew about Alec’s last lodging. 

Cairo would be an interesting place, James reckoned as he alternatively looked their young prisoner and his friend whom he would have to leave once again. A childish bitterness overwhelmed him when he thought about it, breaking his cold heart and his trained mind. They had started to get along, the three of them, they had started to bond in the most unexpected way, a troubled sense of comradeship blossoming with each of their death threat and amused brushing of their trigger.

Every time his white face and blond hair would draw attention, yet as much as Alec’s Slavic features did at the exact moment they crossed the Bab al-Wazir street where shops seemed to never close, yet tourists had not started to wander there like in the bazaar of Khan al-Khalili. They were not welcomed in that part of the city, if Europeans were welcomed anywhere outside the sheltered dome of the Savoy Hotel.

They stood out with their tweed pants since the afternoon sun bathed Cairo in a pleasant warmth despite the fact that it was still the middle of March. Locals wore cotton djellabas and mostly remained in the shade of their shops, staring at them with expressions of mixed disdain and lure for profit for White foreigners were always easy to swindle. Here and there they ran into camels and donkeys carrying jugs of water and children playing with small white pebbles. Closer to the river, the streets were wrapped in the putrid smell of the Nile overflowing its banks.

Alec’s neophyte eyes kept on drifting from one peculiarity to the next, much to Q’s annoyance, for the younger man did not want to be perceived as Englishmen were usually perceived by Egyptians, and rightly so, in those times of occupation.

“Hurry up,” the dark-haired man ordered when Alec had stopped in front of a coppersmith shop in the bazaar they were perambulating into, widening the distance between them three.

Alec shot him an aggressive look in order to remind the young man who the captive really was.

“He’s right,” James added, his timber lower when they caught the unwanted attention of a lemonade vendor. “You seem to forget our hostage won’t wait our permission to run away.” 

Early in the morning, when the boat had berthed and before any attempt to call the SIS, they had rented a couple of rooms in an unnoticeable inn of Old Cairo, where Q had sighed at James’s broken Arabic and elbowed the blond man away from the counter to order in what had appeared to be perfect Masri. If a slight foreign accent still remained to James’s ears, the boy impressed the owner enough for the latter to burst into laughter and to start a conversation with the young man. Alec had seen that sudden outburst of friendliness as a threat for their cover and was ready to intervene until the old Egyptian significantly lowered his price. 

“You two lack the haggling culture,” Q had smiled on their way up the stairs to their bedrooms, as the two other men froze with the realisation that it would be very easy for Q to run away and win the favour of the locals. He most likely had contacts there as well – this young man definitely had more than one tick up his sleeve, much to their concern.

“The swine feed there too,” Alec grumbled as they passed a shoeshine stand where a seemingly wealthy European was having his light-toned pair of oxfords polished by a boy on his knees who was just past childhood.

James saw Q’s head turning to have a look at the scene, his features contorted in a silent anger by a jolt of self-hatred, for this wealthy man could have been his father in all his hegemonic glory or even himself in a few decades time.

“_All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned_,” Alec quoted as they walked away from the shoeshine stand, his Slavic accent comically perceptible as if he was trying to further distance himself from the transaction they had just witnessed.

“You read his work?” Q exclaimed, interest suddenly picked. There was a sacred aura to Q’s “his” and a drastic change in his foul mood, James noticed with half a smile as he knew where the conversation was heading already.

“I did,” came Alec’s smug reply as he granted the younger man a tranquil glance.

“It’s marvellous, isn’t it? His passion, his certainty that things can finally change. That’s what I enjoy the most about him, his certainty.” dreamy like “I’ve never been raised to be certain of anything. Everything is always so coated with politeness and subterfuge. Lord Symes and his kind did that constantly, setting up plans and shams that is. They have no passion, no true conviction. Marx did! What a great man he must have been…”

Although not uttering a word, Alec was nodding, more eagerly than he was willing to admit – James could see it quite well, the Russian man’s eyes shining with passion. And Q might have perceived it as well for he continued with the same spirit.

“In Oxford, students were so dull,” he deplored with a theatrical pout. “They were lulled to mental sleep by the same early _Spectator_ liberalism. They too were so sure of their superiority, on other Brits, on the rest of the world. So many things to them could not be questioned, even hypothetically.”

Alec snorted, hiding the holes left by his desultory education behind a relaxed expression of amusement. He did not understand half of what Q was referring to, but he could sense with exactitude the fire burning in his words, his sincere disgust for the society he had left behind. From one moment to the next, he feared James or Q would see through his mask of light-heartedness his slight imbalance at the perfectly articulated reflection of the young man. He possessed the lure of facundity which Alec usually distrusted, but now suddenly found himself under the spell of.

“We simply could not get along with each other,” Q did not seem to be able to stop talking, his hands sometimes agitated with a surge of life at the remembrance of his university years. “Everything is so neatly arranged in their heads, ranked. The owner and the workers, the bosses and the labourers, the Whites and the others, men and women. They did not even consider their own fiancées their equal, let alone factory workers or Indians!”

“Barbarism begins at home,” the Russian man let out for that was the only comment he felt sure enough to utter with confidence in front of Q. 

James sighed although his eyes were still lit with what Alec thought was connivance. “Oh pity me! I think I preferred your persiflage on the boat than your mutual indoctrination.”

“Persiflage,” Alec repeated under his breath, quite baffled by his friend’s choice of word – James, it appeared, was growing more and more eloquent in contact with this younger bourgeois and Alec worried there were not an ounce of the sinister agent that he knew oh-so well left in him.

Before he had the time to add anything more, they found themselves in front of the Saladin Citadel. The Alabaster mosque looked down on them and their afternoon squabbles and only then did Alec realise that they were so far away from London. If James and Q had been to Africa before, Alec’s peregrinations had not led him that far southwards. His lands of predilection were the lands of his ancestors and that was the explanation to the situation he now found himself right in – he should have known better than to fool with the Bratva.

“Am I allowed one last wish before being handed back to Britain?” Q inquired as they were bypassing the citadel to reach the district their inn was located in.

“I rather not,” James replied, his revolver still secured against his hipbone.

Q was about to reply, his clever mouth already opening in protestation, when Alec’s eyes drifted through the busy street, locating in its far end, behind a stall of vegetables, the familiar silhouette of a small sturdy man, dressed in the manner of the East of Europe in spite of the sun; and his heart stopped beating.

“This way,” he ordered his two acolytes, forcefully gripping James’s sleeve and leading them to a narrow street, quite dusty and darkened by the tall buildings of the brothels. James and he had just the time to share a knowing look before their hands grabbed Q’s shoulders in order to prevent the speccy young man to use the situation to his advantage. Alec could feel him analyse their faces and draw conclusions as they hurried towards their inn. He already possessed too much information on them not to fill the blanks.

One glimpse back told Alec that they were not followed. They slowed their pace, loosened their grip on Q’s tweed jacket, not willing to be noticed more than they already were. An old lady urged them in Arabic to enjoy the company of a young girl she pushed in their direction, a poor thing whose messy hair was covered by a dark veil which made her thirteen-year-old face look older. Somehow she reminded Alec of his female fellows at the orphanage in Novonikolayevsk.

“_La, la_,” James dismissed, probably equally unsettled. Q’s face was dark and his eyes fixed on the dirt at their feet as they walked down the narrow street. Was it what men like them usually did, he could almost hear Q think, help themselves to some land and some girls?

Soon enough they found their way back to the small inn, using the backdoor and climbing to their shared communicating rooms – two in total just to avoid the dubious look of locals. They threw Q on his bed, not restraining themselves in any way, as they caught their breath, their temples still beating with the rush of blood and adrenaline.

“So you’re wanted,” came Q’s exhausted voice as he was cleaning his glasses with the bottom of his shirt. They were all covered in dust and sweat in this late afternoon, but it was unlikely now that they would dare themselves outside of their rooms to dine or go to the public baths.

“It makes two of you,” James commented, refusing to play pretend any longer. Any bump in the paved road that was his plan he could not bear and he now wished that the boat to France could berthed sooner than expected, since he could not envision a universe in which he could both complete his mission and protect Alec.

He turned to his friend who had grown silent and saw that he was nervously checking on his magazine, probably preparing for the worst.

“You two know we cannot hide here forever, right? The owner is going to talk, three Europeans do not go unnoticed in the neighbourhood,” the brown-haired man said, his brain already going over their potential way-outs with a fine-tooth comb.

“There’s no ‘we’,” James barked back, giving an angry kick in Q’s suitcase. “You’re coming back with me! His business is none of _your_ business!” It must have been his many sleepless nights spent watching Q that had just spoken and not the overwhelming sense of loss taunting him. Their secrets and plans were falling apart alike and James could not focus on anything, he could not hear himself think.

The room filled with a silence only interrupted with Alec’s fondling of his revolver.

“I’ve got contacts,” Q said, his voice calmer after James’s outburst. “I don’t know why I should help you since the only thing you two did since the beginning was to put a spoke in my wheel. But the thing is that I have the means to help you. The three of us actually. I know how to leave the country using the clandestine ways. You only have to say a word. We only have to make a deal.”

Q could clearly see the helpless light in Alec’s eyes when his look brushed against the rough surface of the suitcase which contained more money than he could ever dream to have in his possession one day.

“No,” said the double-0 agent, his voice cold now that he had recovered his even temper, his professional demeanour, setting aside his feelings.

Alec’s features wrinkled in anger, the contortions of his skin conferring to his burn scar a more crumpled appearance under the descending light of the late afternoon. His revolver was firmly secured in his fist, as he spat, “Yes, of course, you say that! James Bond, his Majesty’s loyal terrier, defender of the so-called faith! Oh, please, James, put it away!”

The room froze and Alec fished Q’s revolver from where he had kept it in his belt since they had got out of the boat. He pointed one in Q’s direction, the other to James’s face, sure the agent would not try to draw his gun back at him. Q remained still, observing James, not fearing for his life anymore, now that they were all in some sort of swamp of conflict of interests. He’d rather die right now than be sent back to Mother Britannia, jailed to death or utilised against his deepest convictions.

“Did you ever ask why? Why we toppled all those gangs, undermined all those warlords, only to come home: Well done, good job, but sorry, old boy, everything you risked your life and limb for has changed. These are just power games and I will not let you screw my chances of survival by loyalty for your mission. Not this time!”

From where he was sat on the bed, Q saw that James’s face was suddenly shadowed by memories that even his most inspired deductions could not fathom. His icy blue eyes darkened as they fixed on the barrel pointing at him. It was not a firearm threatening him but a rush of guilt, memories laced with suffering, a past together that something in Q died to be in the know of, and not from a purely intellectual stance.

Alec waited, delighted in the effect he had produced, the confusion he had cast on his old friend’s sentiments. The air was thick with tension and only the youngest of them was aware of time running out.

Facing the absence of a reply, Q threw his arms in the air, throwing James a dirty look. “Fine,” he exclaimed with a click of the tongue, “but I give less than three hours to this man at the market to find us and do whatever he wants to do!”

At the comment he albeit thought intruding, Alec lowered the gun he pointed at Q, his eyes not leaving Bond for a second, too aware of the latter’s physical abilities, his trained sense of timing. If Q was a mastermind, a small genius though capable of holding a gun, he was nothing like a SIS agent. Alec could tell from his smell only that he had never pulled a trigger and cold-bloodedly killed a man.

His lips stretched in half a smile of pure, victorious domination. He would eventually lower his revolver, he would not go as far as killing his only reliable friend – unless this only friend was not reliable anymore. No, no, Alec did not care enough for life to refuse to die and kill the man he had come to the conclusion that he loved. He wanted him to choose, to weigh up the price he would pay for his actions, to sacrifice something for him, like a long time ago Alec had endangered his life for him.

“So what’s the choice, James? Two targets – time enough for one shot: me or the mission?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed the ride, please comment, share or kudo!   
Remember that this fic is part of a SERIES that gives (juicy) details on the characters' background! So check it up (I promise that there isn't as many Marxist quotes in the additional ficlets)   
See you next time!


	9. Southward, Angel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Momentarily sheltered from the wind by the remnant of the dune, the three men looked at each other, in a state of stupefaction.  
“It wasn’t so terrible,” Alec tried to joke, smiling at the man in the back who was still trembling, looking at his attempts at caulking the car from the inside.  
“That’s just the beginning,” Q replied, lugubrious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, the international ongoing psychosis caused me to be contained home for the next two (or three?) weeks? So like. I’m back on tracks! Take care!

It was not the first time James found himself in this situation. Or rather that one of his lovers of the past, that he tried to bury deep on the edge of his heart, had found themselves in that same situation, hunted down, caught up by dark figures of their past. At that moment, as they were walking down Muski Street, dressed in dull djellabas, their heads carefully wrapped with cloth _à l’orientale_, James could not but think about Vesper.

The few fortune tellers they had ran into during their present perambulation through Cairo would have all agreed on the matter: he was a jinx, he was cursed, he hoodooed all those his heart set on. He had tried to live on his own, to shelter his feelings from those whom he might put at risk, but Alec was the one who had taken up residence on his sofa after all.

It was not the first time James found himself in this situation, yet this time he chose not to let go of the man he dared love. This time he was not going back to England.

Helped by an envelope full of Egyptian pounds, James sent a telegram to the SIS with the promise that the message would appear to be sent from Alexandria. _Quarry broke free. Revert to stage 1. 007_.

Stage 1 was what he along other fellow 00-agents commonly named the hunt, the race, British Bulldog, hopscotch, but what Mallory and M, for pretended practical reasons, but mainly because their secluded offices prevented from any fun, used numbers to refer to. In his mind James enumerated the other steps he might have to take with Q or Alec if they were found by the SIS, before being taken down too, in the way the agency liked the most. That was to say making their former agent regret every step of the way that had led them there. Torture. A slow agony.

Stage 2, charging. Stage 3, feeding time. Perhaps Alec was right to call him a terrier, although a hound would have been more fitting.

James had to take flight.

* * *

When navigating on the Nile proved to be impossible, they bought a car in Al-Wasitah - a Dutch specimen which the Algerian seller seemed too happy to get rid of for the whole affair not to smell fishy. Given how deep in trouble they were, none of them gave much thought about it; rumours, guilt, second-thought had been washed away quickly after they had obtained their informal safe conduct.

They were getting deeper and deeper into lands, helped here and there by Q’s mastering of different local dialects of Arabic and his disconcerting ability to haggle under any circumstances, which never failed to cause Alec’s awe, for this young speccy man would have swindled any tycoon of the Bratva had he tried.

Then the people they encountered became fewer and fewer, until there were only the three of them in the Dutch car, pushing further and further still, roads vanishing in esplanades of blinding sand.

And the desert voraciously swallowed them for good.

* * *

“A storm is coming,” the black-haired man spoke from the backseat of the car, his body hunched forward to have a glimpse at the yellowing sky.

Alec had noticed the change a long time ago, as James was still focused on driving through the uneasy road. Sand kept on slowing their wheels and thus their drive down the African continent, and they had to stop every two hours to inspect their tyres or the chains around them.

“What do you mean?” Alec asked, his brows furrowed. He ignored if he had heard him right, with the labouring of the motor under the bonnet and Q’s suitcase rattling the different cans and tins they had accumulated in the back of the car as to survive a couple of weeks in the desert.

“Exactly what I said,” Q groaned, exasperated by the slowness of Alec’s brain cells. He pointed at the sky and repeated what he had said a few seconds before, with all the glorious poise the awareness of his superior intellect conferred him.

“What storm?” James gauged good to intervene as he could feel the Russian man’s blood boiling on the adjacent seat. Q’s aplomb was something one had to grow accustomed to, and perhaps Alec was still hold at some previous stage compared to James, the blond agent frequently told himself.

“Well, this one,” Q’s voice cracked with frustration since he had been hinting at the obvious for the last three minutes at least and physically pointing at it for far too long already. “A sandstorm!”

Alec would have exploded if it were not for the worrying fact the speccy young man had just uttered. His clear eyes squinted at the horizon, analysing the sky as if his interpretation of unknown factors could help diagnosing any meteorological events. James did the same, out of ……

“We need to stop,” Q added, his fingers pressing into the back of the seats in front of him.

Alec frowned again, looking back and encountering the blatant, white fear in the younger man’s hazel eyes. It was the first time he witnessed such a genuine feeling in Q. The young fellow usually wrapped himself in pride and mockery and albeit Alec did not look further, he had never seen anything trustworthy in him.

“It seems quite faraway from here,” James echoed Alec’s doubts, although a glimpse at his friend’s expression told him that Q was not faking it.

“It’s not! You know nothing of the desert!” This time the young scholar sat up in the passenger compartment, his head almost hitting the ceiling as he reached for the handbrake, threatening the two other men to stop the car the good old way.

James reacted before Q could take hold of the brake and stopped the car on top of a dune, not close enough from the edge for them to risk to fall over, were the winds less gentle than James anticipated.

“What about now?” Alec asked in a sigh, his eyes searching for clues in the sky, any indication that something was about to happen. Everything was calm though.

Everything apart from Q who opened the back door with a kick of his foot and leaped outside. The loud thump of the door caused the two trained men to reach for their revolvers before they followed him outside, their gun finding its place back in their belt as quickly as it had been taken out. When they jumped out of the compartment, they found that Q had already climbed up the roof, tugging on ropes to take their packing apart.

“We need to put all that inside, quick!” He ordered, his voice loud and authoritative, his muscles flexing with his effort.

In Al-Wasitah, they had filled three jerrycans of oil and tied them up on the roof, along with everything Alec and James had deemed necessary for their trip down the continent. Q took everything apart, tossing it to the two men with the speed of a trained agent, his breathing laboured.

“Take the covers,” he barked to Alec once they had finally listened to him and proceeded to shelter their few belongings inside the car. “There!” He pressed, jumping from the roof with ease, his shirt as soaked with sweat as James’s or Alec’s. He grabbed the covers from Alec’s hands and pushed the two men inside the car, not spearing them the least as he caulked the doors and windows with the covers.

When the fabric started to run low, Q took off his shirt and used it to caulk another window. James, who had been attempted to imitate him with the few rags he had found in the tool box on the back of the car, stopped to take a look at the pale chest crossed by bones of all sorts – ribs, sternum, collarbones –, a pale piece of flesh that, unlike his face or his arms, had not burnt in the sun.

“Just bloody do the same!” Q urged as the compartment seemed to have frozen.

Alec mirrored his actions, revealing a broad and hairy chest, riddled with scars of knife fights, bullet wounds and the burn marks, quite similar to the one that bedecked his cheek. James reached instead for their coats which they had almost abandoned in Cairo because of the heat and the little room they had in the car compartment. Their djellabas served that same purpose and a couple of minutes later, it seemed there was not anything else to do but to turn to Q and wait for his orders.

The young man was out of breath and neither James nor Alec could tell if his frenzy was the cause, or a genuine fear of what was looming over them. Their clothes at the windows and doors prevented them from having a clear view at the sky. Yet Q was waiting, focused on the few sounds he apparently perceived from the outside.

“Please, do not tell me we just wasted our time doing all this,” Alec sighed when he finally sat down on one of the front seats, his bare chest rising and deflating in rhythm with his slowing breathing. Sat behind the wheel, James felt the urge to touch his many scars – the last time he had seen Alec with so little clothes on, they had slept together in the privacy of his Chelsea apartment. How faraway those memories seemed now.

Q hushed him with a tap of his tongue against his palate, his features still tensed as he was listening to the sound of wind brushing against the sides of the car. “It’s coming,” he repeated a few times under his breath, like some lunatic. He sounded like those fortune-tellers in Cairo, or the ones Alec had meant in his childhood in Russia. “You know nothing of the desert,” Q warned when Alec was back to brooding on the passenger seat.

James remained silent, trying to perceive what Q was trying to hear, his breathing slowing down and his whole body tensed in apprehension. If it were not the wind or the orange hue of the sky, then there was something in the air that kept James on his guards. It reminded him of the silence in the trenches, right before a German assault, his rifle in his hands, his helmet digging into his skull.

“There,” came Q’s reply, in a breathy tone. James could almost see his heart beating into his exposed chest, under his fragile ribcage.

Alec’s mouth opened as to protest, but suddenly a gush of wind hit the car with a violence two of the passengers were not expecting. Without a word, Q wrapped one arm around his legs and gripped the back of the front seat with the other, steadying himself while another gush of wind pushed the car closer to the edge of the dune. Sand whipped the windows and screeched in the air.

“Christ,” Alec let out, baffled, before the car moved, pushed by the storm which was now right onto them. James’s hands grabbed the steering wheel. He could feel the ground giving away bit by bit under the vehicle, the dry sand tumbling down the dune and paralysing their wheels, as they dangerously neared the edge of the dune.

Q closed his eyes, murmuring a few cherished words he had learned during his childhood, swallowing his acid saliva while mentally preparing himself for the impact, for the suffocating sensation of falling. The car started to incline on James’s and Q’s side, a mix of sand and wind hitting the doors without any form of regularity. Alec tried to sustain his weight in place, gripping the side of his seat, failing almost immediately and falling against James. The car grated before sliding heavily from the dune and slowly crashed on some lower ground of sand in a cacophony of hardly muffled screams. Momentarily sheltered from the wind by the remnant of the dune, the three men looked at each other, in a state of stupefaction.

“It wasn’t so terrible,” Alec tried to joke, smiling at the man in the back who was still trembling, looking at his attempts at caulking the car from the inside.

“That’s just the beginning,” Q replied, lugubrious. “Now the dune will fall on top of the car.”

Yet the wind seemed to have faltered ever so slightly. There was still the steady hammering of sand falling on the hood of the car, or on the side doors, which were exposed now that the engine was lying on its side, like a dog on its flank. There was something claustrophobic in the inability to move to save your own life, in the inability to claim for sure that you were out of threat now. They simply waited. The sun set behind the dunes, enclosing them furthermore in a trap of dry sand and darkness. Grains of sand had seeped inside the car in spite of all Q’s ingenuity. They stayed awake until the first rays of sunlight, the next morning.

Alec kicked open his door, more sand rushing into the compartment and hauled himself on top of the vehicle, assessing the situation before pulling James and then Q out of the car with him. Two thirds of the vehicle had been buried and the landscape around them did not look like the one they had left the night before. The mapping of dunes had drastically changed, anchoring in Alec’s and James’s brain the idea that the desert was deadlier than any of their past opponent.

What followed was an entire morning of digging and tugging and pulling the car back on its wheels, until they could take off again, Q’s compass leading them further southwards as they had not registered any loss after the storm. Indeed the seats were scratchy with sand and James had to scour the motor clean for at least an hour before they drove away from where they had unwillingly stopped for the night, but their mind bore the trauma of a hypothetic death, and some grease on their shirt was a small price to pay.

* * *

“I think I need one as well,” Alec chuckled at the blond man smoking as he was stepping out of the car, leaving Q sleeping on the backseats, drenched in sweat yet comfortable. Their exhausted body had caused them to halt during the day, to heat up a can of soup and sleep, the desert quickly reasserting itself on daring travellers.

James noticed his friend had left the key inside, which was very telling of the level of trust the three of them had reached on their way into the desert. Especially after a morning of hard, physical labour, unveiling Q’s unpredicted, yet sometimes greatly inefficient, tenacity. Be it exhaustion or retreat, the youngest of the group wasn’t so corrosive anymore and it seemed to James that Alec had grown fond of him somehow – in his very strange and hardly observable way, of course, but ‘fond’ nonetheless.

The sandstorm had calmed down, leaving the air thick with warmth and dust. There was not a day during which James did not regret simply following the Nile, for the river would have provided the moist he needed as not to feel completely away from home. The desert seemed unfriendly in so many ways… But Q appeared to be sure of himself, with his maps and his compass, his intense looking at the sun and constant mumbling. He could have done anything of them – lost them, lead them right into a trap, kill them, you name it – but James trusted him.

And he did not know what to do with that trust. How to call it.

“There,” said the blond agent, handing a cigarette to his friend. He would lack tobacco very soon too and he could not imagine how on edge he would be when his entrails would start to feel starved, deprived of their most precious fuel. 

Alec sighed in relief when the tobacco hit the back of his throat, sending waves of relaxation down his spine. He stretched his arms which, he considered, had remained inactive for far too long those last few days on the road. He grabbed the side of the cover which still filtered the light and sheltered Q from the sun as the young man was sleeping or simply wallowing in his own sweat, too weak to move. Alec had realised the desert had this effect on people – on them, to be more precise. They seemed to be in a haze, tired without any other reason but their lack of water and proper food, the omnipresence of the most disagreeable heat…

"You know what happens to agents who betrayed the Crown, don't you?" James asked, his eyes dark and his lips still holding his cigarette. Some smoke escaped from his mouth when Alec turned to have a look at him.

“Did you betray the Crown, James?” he countered, although his tone was not so self-assure anymore. James had noticed his friend’s cockiness had decreased the more they drove across the desert. “They still think you’re after him.”

“For how long?”

Alec shrugged, cracking another match as his cigarette’s butt had been extinguished by a gush of dry wind, a remnant of the sandstorm. His eyes turned to James and Alec found there the frustration the British man had accumulated over the years, the pain, the fear. There was the ghost of Vesper in hiding. 

* * *

Q was not sleeping – he could not find proper rest with the suffocating heat burning his lungs, nor with grains of sand sliding under his eyelids, getting inside his nose and inside his mouth every time he rolled on the back seat.

He could faintly hear the conversation the two men were having, leaned on the side of the car. Then the words ceased and Q opened his eyes, welcomed by a ray of sunshine that Alec had let filtered through the cover, his fingers still wrapped around the wool material when James grabbed the side of his face to give him a harsh kiss on the mouth, a ferocious kiss, filled with resentment. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed!  
If you think you recognised a certain scene from The English Patient…. well you did. Congrats. But honestly this film is super good and is responsible for a lot of things in my life – including bathing and sewing fantasies.  
Some more chapters and ficlets are coming (this time, for real, folks!) Stay tuned, it should be on in the next few days! Bisous


	10. Third World Child

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Who is he?” rose Alec’s husky voice, more curious than teasing this time.  
“Whether you would understand or not I am not entirely certain,” the raven haired man replied, a shroud of sadness wrapping his words in spite of the calm attitude he wanted to confer to his voice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for taking so long. I've got a lot of things to do and I know that this story is not very interesting...   
Anyway, here is the new update. I hope you'll enjoy it... :'(

The harmattan blew on the dry road as they made their way past Soba, their tanks filled with oil and enough water to sustain their trip further south the African continent. A routine was born out of their long journey through the desert. A month had gone by since their meeting on the boat. A month already, James thought on the front seat as Alec drove steadily on the dusty track.

They had joined the Nile and its pleasurable dampness – one could feel it in the wind. They had nearly died a couple of times, they had famished and used their spit as only beverage, but they were safe now. Their car was filled with food and water. They were safe now. 

“Damn continent,” Alec spat between his teeth, sweat running down his back and soaking his shirt. It was near 102°F, James could tell it – he had rarely felt such an intense heat rising from the soil and pushed back on them by the sun.

“There’s usually little to no precipitation until late May,” Q answered as if his words could soothe the other man. James turned slightly to have a glimpse at the speccy young man who was absorbed by his study of the map, not bothered the least by the steady rocking of the car in the numerous potholes. He marked a pause, turning the large paper around before, nodding to himself. “We’ll push south to the Great Lakes region, to Kenya and eastward still to Nairobi,” he explained, showing the two other men the map, although Alec was busy maintaining their car on the road. “You’ll get used to it, eventually,” came his answer to the Russian man. His _wicked _answer, James had to admit.

They stopped in Khartoum where the unwanted presence of the British had provided the three travellers with a garage ran by an old man, a former soldier from Suffolk who had settled after the Battle of Omdurman with his wife and children. They dined in the White part of the city, hiding themselves from both the Sudanese locals who were reluctant to European presence and the British soldiers who might have asked a little too many questions. 

They left the city an hour after their car was ready, stopping at al-Mogran. The region had turned green and luxurious and the spectacle before their eyes left Alec’s mouth opened in awe. Q jumped out of the car, running to the shore and watching the White and the Blue Niles meeting. He had read about it in books, come across pictures at university and now it stood before his very eyes, powerful and calm.

“We should stop there for the night,” he told his two partners. Could they arrest him and send him back to England, into his father’s claws now that they had witnessed with him the prodigious miracles of nature? How could they possibly deprived him from his freedom after he had led them to such a place?

The red muddy waters mingled with the clear blue hues of the other branch of the Nile, uniting and pushing through the African land in the reversed way they had taken with their car.

Q heard James and Alec shutting the doors close and stepping out, embracing the view and lighting cigarettes like men do after lovemaking.

“That’s the confluence of the White Nile and the Blue Nile,” he told them, before turning back to the spectacle of nature. During his few months back in England, he had missed the strength of undomesticated nature – fierce rivers and unforgiving weathers, the starry night, undisturbed by the city lights, hearing the birds and the buffalos.

“So that’s the reason why you did not marry that woman?” James asked out of the blue as the last curl of smoke evaded from his pursed lips. “Africa?”

Q briefly turned back to him, before facing the river again. The uneasiness in his shoulders did not escape Alec’s and James’s watchful eyes. “Maybe,” he replied with the nonchalance he displayed daily. “How thick is the file Lord Symes handed to you exactly?”

“The SIS does the research. Your father only confirmed,” James smiled at him, oh-so sure of himself that Q mentally murdered him for the cockiness.

His lips burnt with the desire to expose them for the kiss they had exchanged as they had assumed he was sleeping in the car, back in the desert. Yet his exposing him would only have led him to be exposed in return. He did not doubt they already knew why he had not married Louisa although the girl was charming.

“It could be Africa,” he sighed, sitting on the grass at his feet. Grass, finally.

“Or could it be him?” Alec asked, a wicked smile curling his lips.

Q frowned and turned again. Because the sun reflected on his glasses and blinded him, he could only see the silhouette of a photograph he knew too well. His body jerked upwards and he crawled on his feet, an animalistic groan leaving his throat. The photograph Alec was proudly holding came from his suitcase where Q had tried to protectively hide it from unwanted eyes.

“Give it back to me!” He ordered, hearing something of his youthful begging tone in his voice as he charged Alec and launched him against the ground, attacking him with his fists. It resembled the fights he had had with other pupils at Eton – he almost always lost and ended up with lines and a black eye in a corner of his supervisor’s office. “Give it to me, you ape!”

Chuckling, James took the picture from Alec’s hand at the moment when Q would have been the most likely to get it back and inspected it, another cigarette secured between his tight lips. Q remained on Alec’s chest, maintaining him down, although he believed he was not resisting at all.

“If you wanted to hide your emotions, that’s lost on you,” James observed, blowing the smoke away from the photograph as though the man on the picture could have been bothered by the smell.

“I’m not trying to hide anything.” Q relaxed ever so slightly and reached for the photograph expectantly, waiting like a nanny waits for the proof of a child’s naughtiness to be handed to her.

But James did not move, only gazing at the image of the young man printed on the paper. “He’s pretty,” he commented before theatrically turning it between his fingers for Alec to have another look at the man’s face.

“Daddy was not too proud of your befriending Black men,” the Russian snarled, before Q punched him on the jaw, cutting his bragging short and replacing his mockery with a grunt of pain. “But it knows how to fight!”

James laughed and put the photograph on the back seat, where Q usually sat. “Enough, get up you two.” Without another word, James grabbed Q by the shoulders and lifted him back to his feet, before handing him his cigarette, which was pedantly disregarded, Q brushing the dust off his shirt with the disdain of a prince.

“You’re too kind to him,” Alec complained, rubbing his jaw and getting on his feet without the help of James – a help that was not provided anyway.

“And you’re not enough,” the blond agent replied, smiling quizzically at his friend after their young fellow had walked away from them with the picture, sliding it in his back pocket and changing the subject to some more proper discussion about where to start the fire. He was not fooling anyone and Alec peeped at him with softer eyes for a split second before the expression left his look and he regained his usual mask of coldness.

* * *

After nearly a month on the road, after sleepless nights spent trying to nap on the seat of a Dutch car, Alec could not be happier at the prospect of finally lying on a flat surface, tender grass tickling the exposed skin of his arms as the fire gently died next to the three of them. The Nile rumbled quietly in the night and moths flew in swarms above their heads. Alec had had rougher nights, that was for sure. He let his thoughts evade to sterner topics – the men after him, his broken life somewhere in Europe. It had never fazed him before that night, so peaceful and so far from his usual concerns, that there was a sense of scattered and non-existent in the life of a former agent. James, although he had a flat in Chelsea and a seemingly orderly routine, would soon know it for himself too, Alec thought as the fire was nothing but a pile of dying ashes next to him now, and all because of him. There was a high chance for James to be killed and put under surveillance for the rest of his life – but why would the Crown bother with watching a man for the rest of his life when they might just as well shoot him. James had no family to wonder where he could have gone.

“You’re thinking too much,” came Q’s disdainful voice from the other side of the fire, “be careful it might hurt you.”

James pretended he had not heard their banter, too preoccupied with the idea of falling asleep despite the moths flying close to his ears. It seemed his blood was drawing mosquitos more than that of his fellows. As soon as they would find another city, they would buy a tent for the three of them, he promised himself. Or a net in which he could wrap himself and let Alec and Q be the victims of insects’ thirst for blood.

“If we weren’t lost in the middle of nowhere,” Alec began with a tired voice, “I would’ve strangled you a long time ago.”

Q chuckled playfully, not very impressed by the lazy words slurred by a man on the verge of slumber. And he knew the Russian was not to be taken too seriously, he had in his eyes the dead look of a man who went to hell and back several times. Q had seen the feverish look he had thrown at the few Whites who were nursing a glass of whiskey on a terrace in Khartoum – how he would have cold-bloodedly killed them to steal a sip of their beverage. James were not like that. James was calm and thought-through, pleasant even.

“We’re not lost,” Q replied, folding his arm under his head and looking at the stars. With his glasses laid next to him on his coat, he could not distinguished the constellations that he usually knew so well for having watched their slow apparition in the African skies so many times when England had seemed to far that he had thought he would never see the banks of the Thames ever again. How gullible of him.

Time passed and soon Q sensed that James had fallen asleep. Alec was still turning on his jacket every now and then, but the youngest of the three men usually waited for them to be asleep, just so he would not miss on some important words they exchanged. They were men of very few words and so missing one could have tremendously negative consequences.

“Who is he?” rose Alec’s husky voice, more curious than teasing this time and Q pondered if he should tell him or not. If the kiss James and Alec had shared in the desert was any indication, it was that they shared more than what had first met his eyes.

“Whether you would understand or not I am not entirely certain,” the raven haired man replied, a shroud of sadness wrapping his words in spite of the calm attitude he wanted to confer to his voice.

Alec bit his lips, turning in Q’s direction and trying to map his silhouette with the little help the dying fire provided. Earlier in the afternoon he had noticed that their young victim had not put the picture back in his suitcase and that he surely wore it in the pocket of his trousers or the inside pocket of his shirt, that unusual pleat close to his heart.

“I am certain I would.”

Q remained silent for a while. For a few years now remembering had been like walking on embers. From the memory of his brother dying on the field to the one of his friends, jailed, killed, vanished, he could not help but think why he was still standing alive when he felt like an empty envelop of skin. Strangely enough, his memories had stopped haunting him since his impromptu meeting with James and Alec on the ship. Until that afternoon.

“He’s a friend.”

Alec only seemed half-convinced by the answer, which amused Q to no end – what was the Russian expecting anyway?

“How did you meet?”

“A newsroom in Nairobi.”

Alec nodded in the dark. Now his understanding of Q’s teenage tantrum, his campaigning, his intense rage against his father, found a new ground, a ground that he could comprehend because he had always estimated friendship, no matter what James could say about it. James was not a friend after all – or was he? Was he not something more?

“What’s his name?”

“Louis.” Even his name sounded foreign, blurred by many months, many trips, many excuses he gave to himself.

“Is he a journalist?”

Q sighed, turning on his side as though preparing himself to fall asleep. “He was.”

Alex fell silent for a few seconds, not moved, yet not completely cold-hearted. “Then be certain I understand.” He was almost sure he could see Q smile in the darkness, grateful, it seemed and Alex could tell why.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of the chapter is a refernce to Johnny Clegg and Savuka's song, Third World Child.


End file.
